Coronavirus alarm mixes yellow danger and red fear

As Asian Americans, I am not surprised that there is many reports surfacing racist and xenophobic responses in the United States (and somewhere else) following the coronavirus epidemic, where coughing in Asia is compared to driving in black. If in doubt about the racialization of media coverage, reports on new updates to coronaviruses in the United States, especially in regions like New York, use header images people from East Asia wearing face masks to give the impression that Chinese people are the sole carriers of disease, even when they are not Chinese.

Looking at the sensationalist and racist corporate media coverage of COVID-19 coronavirus, it is clear that everything appellation Wuhan coronavirus, false story and chronology spread by corporate media to demonize China's management of the coronavirus epidemic, does more to stir up mass hysteria and undermine an American opponent only to show support and solidarity with the Chinese people. Anyway, it's the same old Yellow peril and redbaiting the insane American media has always been involved.

Corporate media typical framing actions of the Chinese government to fight the virus parody, describing the movements without controversy in the most insidious terms possible. For example, instead of reporting that Hubei government officials fired for withholding information about the coronavirus epidemic at higher levels, outlets like CNN ((2/13/20) and Internal of the business community ((11/11/20) claimed to have been purged. Discussing the efforts of volunteers to assist China's effective quarantine efforts, the New York Time To tame the coronavirus, Mao-style social control covers in China (2/15/20) presented it as one of the largest social control campaigns in history and described the neighborhood's occupied bodies and volunteers in uniform assisting quarantine efforts as mass crusades of Mao style.

The corporate media bombarded A headline Western audience whose view was that communism was bad and that the coronavirus outbreak was the inevitable result of Asian attachments peculiar to authoritarianism.

the Wall Street newspaper has published articles like A Communist Coronavirus (01/29/20) and China is the real sick of Asia (2/3/20), who happily claimed that the mighty Chinese juggernaut was humiliated by a bat virus hopping the species, and argued that the Wuhan coronavirus is a metaphor for the Chinese Communist Party and that American isolationism is ideas incompatible with the modern world.

Another Time report, Coronavirus Crisis exposes cracks in the facade of China's unit (01/28/20), played a part in the imminent ridiculous collapse of the Chinese government, claiming that the coronavirus epidemic has blown up the facade of a gradually unified society and that the cracks appearing in the stability veneer of China reveals that China remains riddled with vulnerabilities that no censorship or strong weaponry can hide.

the Times Nicholas Kristof (01/29/20) argued that they saw the dangers of the authoritarian Xis model for China and the world, due to the fact that Xis China systematically emptied institutions such as journalism, social media and NGOs (avenues generally operated by the United States at overthrow targeted governments and spread pro-american propaganda).

the Time ((01/25/20) reported that officials in Wuhan and the country withheld critical information, minimized the threat, and berated the doctors who tried to sound the alarm, which should raise questions about the weaknesses at the heart of the system Chinese: China's hierarchical and almost rigid bureaucracy The imperial system discourages local officials from reporting bad news to the central bosses, because the main party leaders in Beijing have little direct power over what is happening in the provinces.

Because a new virus has emerged in a rival state, it does not logically follow that this government should collapse, or that the United States should therefore be more imperialist. But corporate media use these tortured syllogisms, serving as a spokesperson for the U.S. government.

USA Today ran an editorial (12/12/20) by Republican Senator Ben Sasse claiming that the coronavirus disaster is the deadly consequence of the fault and poor regulation of Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, communism being the perfect incubator for the coronavirus. Sasse and the Time Kristof claims that this is the case because the Chinese government has reportedly silenced whistleblowers like Dr. Li Wenliang, which has prevented him from alerting the public to the new coronavirus. (Meanwhile, the United States has detained Chelsea Manning, perhaps its most prominent whistleblower, in prison for almost a year for refusing to testify in the case of Julian Assange, that the United States have charged with espionage for publishing government secrets.)

Almost All of the Corporate Media False Narration about the Coronavirus Epidemic is Based on the Story of Li Being a martyr and Whistleblower who allegedly discovered the coronavirus, but was silenced and arrested by government officials before he could alert the public.

But as many people have already done documented at length, although Dr. Lis' death was tragic, he was not a whistleblower. In fact, the Time reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the onset of the first symptoms in early December and the government's decision to lock the city (02/01/20) refutes the media account of authoritarian secrecy companies to maintain control of the unrest. Li was not a virologist or epidemiologist treating affected patients; he was an ophthalmologist who treated eye problems, which may explain why he wrongly claimed that the new virus was SARS, a related but different coronavirus.

A whistleblower is a person who attempts to alert the public to wrongdoing on the part of individuals or an organization; Li did not consider himself to be a, and did not want his assignment on December 30 in a private WeChat group to share with someone else. Li and his colleagues were also not arrested, as several sensationalist reports falsely claimed without issuing retractions, because Wall Street newspaper ((2/7/20) fact:

Dr. Li Wenliang was taken away by the police and interrogated after speaking to former classmates about a group of pneumonia cases. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Dr. Li Wenliang had been arrested.

Police told Li on January 3 not to spread unverifiable rumors after a screenshot was released on December 31 because false information could be released. unnecessary panic during the Spring Festival (one of the busiest and most important holidays of the year), because at the time there had been no deaths and no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. According to the prestigious New England Medical Journals timeline (01/29/20), the complete genomic sequence was not isolated and shared until January 10, and the first death occurred on January 9, most deaths elderly people with co-morbiditiesand the first confirmed case outside of China was reported on January 13.

More importantly, the Red Scare cover above completely erased the fact that the whistle had already blown by Dr. Zhang Jixian, the first doctor report the new coronavirus to health officials on December 27, which resulted in a ad by the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Wuhan Health Commission (WHC) earlier on December 30, the same day, Li sent an SMS to his seven colleagues (Global Times, 2/6/20). Zhang was not repressed by the government, but rather praised for her efforts.

The Los Angeles Times ((2/16/20) seemed to imply that the coronavirus epidemic was a positive development, to the extent that it has stripped Xi Jinpings' aura of invincibility in a way that no political dissident, opposition party or revolutionary movement could ever, and because his inability to contain it could lead to growing dissent and skepticism toward his form of techno-authoritarianism.

the LA Times even managed to squeeze in references to ancient notions of a heavenly mandate construction, with Confucian thought and deeply ingrained forms of superstition that dominated widely, as a potential explanation of why the Chinese might not realize that Xi and the Communist Party do not have the support of the mysterious forces in the sky.

A less racist and propagandist explanation for why more Chinese people don't rebel against the Chinese government would be the fact that, alongside its repressive institutions, it has not stopped raised their standard of living, an achievement that is reflected in high level of public confidence expressed in surveys.

As Michael Parenti noted in Against the Empire, the corporate media demonizes the leaders of official enemy states as a misrepresentation of the entire population, which is then used to justify American hostility against them. This is evident in the predominant corporate media on coronavirus as a problem for Xi Jinping or the Communist Party (New york times, 1/26/20; Time, 2/6/20; Wall Street newspaper, 2/7/20; Foreign police, 2/10/20; Foreign Affairs, 2/10/20), rather than for the Chinese people and those suffering from the virus abroad, or as a problem to be solved by the international community in cooperation with China.

CNN ((11/11/20) criticized Xis' visit to treatment centers as a staged exit, disregarding the president for never having been at risk of infection and refusing to place himself in a situation where his health was threatened , only on the type of mask he was using! Apparently, the proper way for a foreign head of state to seriously deal with an epidemic is to contract and defeat the disease itself at the risk of its own life.

the New york times Coronavirus outbreak may rekindle stigma for China (2/10/20) offered a plausible denial by claiming that the old stereotypes that China is a source of contagion are unfounded and outmoded, before subtly playing into the racist trope of dirty Asians by retaining allegations that the recent history of China on so-called zoonotic infections raises questions about the public. health practices in the most populous country in the world, because China somehow remains a laboratory itself, according to Dr. Jennifer Huang Bouey of RAND Corporations:

There are quite a few epidemics originating in or crossing China, she said. Two of the devastating flu pandemics of the 20th century, the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu of 1968, both originated in China and have left around 3 million people dead worldwide.

International authorities and leading healthcare professionals do not share the negative assessment of the American media. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres rented China's efforts to contain the epidemic are remarkable and have warned of the country's stigma. The World Health Organization (WHO) has rented China: remarkable transparency and resource mobilization, despite flak corporate media, and declared China will set a new standard for its unprecedented response, and has criticized what it has called a infodemic overabundant and false information.

the Lancet ((01/24/20), a leading British medical journal, shared this positive assessment of China's efforts, praising WHO for not bowing to the pressure of overwhelming attention and the guesswork of declaring a health emergency public service of international concern (USPPI) until necessary. He published a open letter express solidarity with the Chinese authorities and health professionals fighting the disease.

Journalist Patrick Cockburn (Independent, 01/24/20) observed that the need to blame someone, the spread of misinformation and the suspicion of assurances provided by the authorities, are common features of epidemics, as it is difficult for governments to convey a sense of calm and emergency at the same time.

Corporate media provide incessant reports on new figures for epidemics and mortality without providing comparisons with other common diseases and previous epidemics, with headlines like the Washington Publishs Coronavirus cases in South Korea are increasing while Italy confirms the first death of the virus (02/21/20), the New York Time Deaths in China exceed SARS toll (02/09/20) and United States todays The death toll from coronavirus exceeds 1,100; The United States confirms the 13th case (2/19/20). Virtually all of these types of reports include comparisons with previous surface epidemics in China, such as SARS, but scrupulously avoid making comparisons with more familiar and devastating diseases like the flu, and epidemics from the United States like the swine flu H1N1.

for example, when Internal of the business community ((3/6/20) reported that there were more than 100,000 cases of people infected with the coronavirus, with more than 3,400 deaths worldwide, he omitted that the flu infects and kills many more people each year. Although it is true that the coronavirus has a higher mortality rate (sure 0.1%, compared to 3.4% coronavirus), it's also true that the flu is much more contagious and kills many more people. In winter of 201718 In the United States alone, a year worse than usual, the flu has been estimated to have killed 80,000 people. So far in the 201920 season there has been at least 32 million to 45 million influenza infections in the United States and 18,000 to 46,000 deaths. Around the world, the flu kills 650,000 people every year, however, many American adults are so complacent about the flu that 45% worth getting the flu shot every year.

When the American media criticizes China for taking a month to declare an emergency, they omit that when H1N1 first appeared in the United States in 2009, it took the United States government six months declare an emergency and allegedly killed between 150,000 and 575,000 worldwide in its first year. Curiously, the corporate media did not consider this opportunity to question the legitimacy of capitalism or the American government for their management of these diseases, nor to criticize American censorship (FAIR.org, 04/16/19).

Points of sale like New York Time ((02/27/2020) sound the alarm over American authoritarianism when he reported on the censorship of Trump's administrations on key scientists coronavirus, like before climate change, to tighten up the control of coronavirus messages by government health officials and scientists, and to have them coordinate all public statements and appearances with the office of Vice President Mike Pence.

American media hysteria is particularly hypocritical, as virtually all of these reports condemning China's response omit criticism Preparation in the United States for epidemics (which is much worse), and the Trump administration previously fired the chain of command of American governments in the event of a pandemic, reduced funding for disease prevention programs.

However, this threat of inflation and opportunistic alarmism towards official enemies is normal for corporate media. The Oxfords Our World in Data project found huge gaps between what Americans actually die of (cancer and heart disease) and what the media highlight as the cause of death in the United States (homicide and terrorism). Perhaps this sensationalist Yellow Peril and Red Scare coronavirus coverage is the result of the view of the United States government. China itself and his difficult socialist system like viruses that need to be contained.

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The selected image: Gothamist Photo (01/31/20) of Asian Americans wearing surgical masks, illustrating a story about the absence of coronavirus (at that time) in New York.