Sinophobia: The Sociological Understanding of Misinformation About The CoronaVirus - John Edoho

The modern society is faced with a lot of events both natural and manmade that undermine social existence. Interestingly, the phases of globalization have significant implication for international wellbeing and by no small measure, the health dimension is becoming even more worrisome. The latter condition has called to question socio-cultural interaction about health and illness behaviour around the world. While there has been a history of a clear globalization of disease as was the case with the Ebola and SARS viruses, the recent epidemiological character of the Corona Virus portends a unique kind of threat to world health. Obviously, the corona virus pandemic of contemporary time is not only an ominous global health challenge but a very crucial sociological problem especially when we consider the adverse impact it now has on social relationship and social life in general. Between the month of December 2019 and early 2020 the outbreak of corona virus has become the current public health emergency of international concern by a declaration of the World Health Organization on 30^th January 2020. The ongoing epidemic involves multiple outbreaks of Coronavirus Disease 2019, coded as “COVID-19” (CDC Weekly, 2020). This disease is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 virus) a new disease which is closely related to bat coronaviruses, pangolin coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-1). The ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 was first identified in Wuhan, China (ECDC, 2020).

The position of WHO (2020), is that the spread of the virus to other countries was made possible by the Chinese New Year migration of the early and mid-January 2020. Wuhan city is a transport hub in China as such some individuals who travelled for the China new year holiday celebration on 25 January which initiated “The Year of the Rat” got infected and quickly spread it throughout the country. As of 6^th March 2020, More than 89 countries have been affected with prevalent cases in central China, South Korea, Italy and Iran, other countries in no particular other include; Thailand, Japan, Macau, Taiwan, the United States of America, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Nepal, Vietnam, Australia, Malaysia, Canada, Cambodia, Germany, Finland, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, India, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Russia, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Austria, Brazil, Croatia, Switzerland, Greece, Pakistan, North Macedonia, Georgia, Norway, Romania, Denmark, Estonia, Northern Ireland, San Marino, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Iceland, Monaco, Qatar, Ecuador, Luxembourg, Ireland, Armenia, the Dominican Republic, the Czech Republic, Andorra, Indonesia, Tunisia, Nigeria, etc. Accordingly, Tedros Adhanom, the WHO director praised China's response to the virus as of 24 February in combating to avoid a significant number of cases (National Review, 2020). Yet, as new cases reportedly dropped in China the number of new cases outside China had exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time on 25 February 2020. BNO News (2020) reports that more than 98,000 cases have been confirmed, of which over 7,100 were classified as serious. Another over 3,000 people have died of the epidemic in China and over 350 have died in other countries, and more than 53,000 people have recovered.

Statement of the problem

There are several interactional situations that define how society functions especially its level of structural interdependence. Thus, the institutional structure of the society and groups have significant bearing on the way society is eventually managed and this is of huge interest to sociologists.  According to Raimi (2020), the world we live in today is fundamentally and structurally diseased in such a manner that we are progressively living in a vampire social world where all known values that sustain the essence of life have been debased, so humans feast on humans for their daily survival. This does not mean literally eating each other’s flesh, it does however reflect a deficit in how we interact and associate. Thus, an empirical understanding of the problem of diseases and illness behaviours and by implication the proper pathway to finding lasting solution demands a sociological diagnosis and treatment alongside the laboratory sciences and technology.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus was visited with unpreparedness, there is currently no vaccine or any antiviral treatment process, though scientific and laboratory research is ongoing. The only recommended preventive measures include hand washing, maintaining distance from people who are sick, and self-isolation for a period of fourteen days if an individual is suspected of being infected (CDC, 2020). Sociologically, this appears to be a well-informed medical opinion of sustaining or saving life, but very much inclusive are events that touch on social symbols and culture amongst others. A medical doctor prescribing medications and patient’s acceptance is more than a health decision but quite often or not, the cultural and religious beliefs and practices do influence medical-decision making and health-seeking behavior. More so, sentiments arise on the broad background of feelings and interests which develop as a result of socio-cultural interactions amongst people of the same group. Sentiments are emotional feeling bound up with some value judgment, misinterpretation of objects and ideal misinformation. The international response to the problem posed by the coronavirus is apt, the travel restrictions, quarantines, and curfews, temperature checks, advisories warning against travel to regions with ongoing community transmission, yet, the Sinophobia stereotype and racism against people of Chinese and East Asian descent as well as rapid spread of misinformation about the virus poses serious policy and academic concerns.

Conceptual clarification

Sinophobia: An Anti-Chinese sentiment (from Latin Sinae "China" and Greek phobos "fear") is a sentiment against the people of East Asia and the Chinese culture. It is targeted at China, especially minorities living in other countries and involves immigration, development of national identity in neighboring countries, majority-minority relations, imperialist legacies, and racism. Its opposite is Sinophilia.

Coronavirus: The name originated on 11 February 2020, as WHO in a press conference established Coronavirus “COVID-19” as the name of the disease caused by Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), with first case on 1^st December 2019 at Wuhan, Hubei, China.

Theoretical framework

In mainstream sociology, grand theories seek to explain general social problems thus, concerning this study on illness behaviour, we shall consider the theory of structural functionalism. One of the renounced scholars of this theory is a founding father of sociology; Emile Durkheim who proposed division of labour as a process that increases interdependence. Structural functionalism sees the human society as a single interconnected and interdependent social system, each element performs a definite function. Thus, the institution of health, just like the legal, political, economy and family must interact to produce equilibrium. Here, we view the society as an organism which has different parts and the functional integration of the organism as a whole is occasioned by the interdependence of the parts. An abnormality will not bring about growth, so is the social world. Society persist on the principle of functional integration. Thus, failures of certain parts of society will bring about a dysfunction and disequilibrium; society will function in an abnormal way.

Applying this theory to our study, it becomes crystal clear that the ongoing Sinophobia; a form of racism caused by the outbreak of coronavirus is endemic to the survival of the global society. The theory simply posits that for a disease free world we must all play our parts, without ill will, prejudice, and other forms of sentiments. Society will function effectively when all nations are interdependent and come together to seek solution to the outbreak and not to draw back and or make mockery of the people of Asian Descent.

Method

This paper employs the content analysis method. The study relied primarily on secondary sources gathered from news articles, ongoing researches, and information recorded by verified online sources of information. However, it must be noted that a major limitation of this study is that the research is an ongoing epidemic outbreak which restricts the researcher’s participant observation at the time. To its advantage, secondary data does not require access to respondents or subjects (Harris, 2001), making it a less expensive mode of research. An aspect of this paper is to assess the applicability of current literal observation, it is not intended to provide a detailed re-statement of its clinical content but more of conceptual research of existing socio-medical works.

Findings and Discussion

Despite the deliberate political drive to underreport the outcome of the coronavirus, the global scare suggest that the mortality rate is high as every infection brings us closer to losing someone. Our biggest threat is willful ignorance and scaremongers which is worse than the virus itself. It is the place of sociology to explain, interpret and also make predictions in ways that aid better understanding and proper comprehension of events and how these affect the social bond in society.

In Nigeria, on 27 February, the first case was confirmed of an Italian citizen who arrived Lagos from Milan, Italy for a business visit, but later fell ill and was transferred to Lagos State Biosecurity Facility for isolation and testing. The test result was confirmed positive by the Virology Laboratory of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, a part of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. He was transferred to the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos. Some of the reactions by Nigerian citizens have been that the confirmed case is a scam to make use of the funds set aside by government to combat the disease if it surfaces.

It is important to note that just like every human issue, the coronavirus has generated both a healthy and unhealthy sentiments amongst people. These sentiments are mostly woven by racism, misinformation among others. Below, a brief narrative is provided for each of these identified sentiments.

The Racial Sentiment

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), has led to increased Sinophobia; in forms of extreme prejudice, discrimination, violence, and racism against China, people of East Asian and regions of penetration, many countries in Europe, US and Africa are seeing rising anti-Chinese sentiment. For instance, in Australia, Vrajial (2020) reports two highest circulating newspapers that published provocative headlines. Melbourne's Herald Sun's headline read, "Chinese virus pandamonium", a misspelling of "pandemonium" and alluding to China's native pandas, while Sydney's Daily Telegraph's headline read, "China kids stay home". One of the outcomes of these headlines was a petition of over 51,000 signatures demanding an apology (The National, 2020). Also in Western Australia, AU News (2020) reported an incident at Woolworths’ supermarket in Port Hedland whereby a staff refused entry to customers who appeared to be of Asian descent, claiming it was to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. A witness to the incident made a complaint that was upheld by Woolworths who confirmed that the staff was wrong, and apologized for the incident and said they were conducting a full investigation into such discriminate action.

According to Chrysanthos (2020), the Ravenswood School for Girls, Sydney's North Shore ordered a South Korean student to leave her school dormitory even when she had not been to China since visiting Shanghai in October 2019 and was medically cleared when she arrived at the school. Similarly, Bell (2020) reported that a Chinese-Malaysian student in Perth found herself evicted from her shared home upon returning to Australia after visiting her home country for the Lunar New Year. In addition, on Chung (2020) reported that a man collapsed and died of a suspected cardiac arrest outside of a restaurant in Sydney and viral videos circulating on social media suggest that bystanders refused to perform CPR out of fear of the novel coronavirus. In the same vein, Peter Akman, a reporter who works with Canada's CTV News, tweeted an image of his Asian barber in mask and said, "Hopefully all I got today was a haircut” and got himself fired after the tweet was reported (Smith, 2020). Furthermore, Cecco (2020) reported that an online petition was set up, urging schools to ban Chinese students. A board that represents 208 schools in Toronto condemned the petition, saying that it is inciting ethnic racism and bias. In a similar twist, Solhi (2020), highlighted a petition in Malaysia calling for citizens from China to be banned from entering the country on the claim that the "new virus is widely spread throughout the world because of unhygienic lifestyle”, the petition was reportedly signed by a little over 250,000 people within a week.

In Thailand, a restaurant in Chiang Mai displayed a sign which read, "We apologize we are not accepting CHINESE customers. Thank you." after a customer left the restaurant upon noticing a group of Chinese people inside. The police demanded that the sign be taken down, but suggested that it could be rewritten in Chinese as "We ran out of food” (Asia Times, 2020). To add to the list of negative racial reports, CNN (2020), noted that Tottenham Hotspur’s footballer Dele Alli, posted a video on Snapchat where he wore a face mask and appeared to mock an Asian man seated near him in Dubai about the coronavirus outbreak. He later apologized and deleted the video. In Solihull, United Kingdom, a Chinese-origin woman was allegedly called "a dirty Chink" and told "Take your fucking coronavirus back home!". An Indian-origin woman who tried to intervene was beaten up and later hospitalized (Times of India, 2020). To make matters worse, an alleged fake World Health Organization (WHO) flyer in Los Angeles advised people to avoid Asian-American restaurants (BBC News, 2020)

Kurohi (2020), reports that the Ministry of Home Affairs has ordered an investigation against an Islamic teacher named Abdul Halim bin Abdul Karim, who posted on Facebook that coronavirus outbreak was "a retribution by Allah against the Chinese for their oppressive treatment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang." In a separate post, Abdul Halim claimed that Chinese people do not wash properly after defecating and were not as hygienic as Muslims, causing the virus to spread. Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam reacted to the comments as "xenophobic" and "thoroughly racist" and is "quite unacceptable from anyone, let alone someone who is supposed to be a religious teacher." The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore is aware of the post, which "expresses views that do not represent the Muslim community" and was investigating the matter. In response, Abdul Halim later said that his Facebook post written in Malay, was not intended to be racist and didn't target "any particular race"

In India, Times Now (2020), drew attention to an Islamic cleric Ilyas Sharafuddin who said in an audio address that coronavirus was a "punishment of Allah on China for mistreating Uighur Muslims". Ilyas said that "the Chinese have threatened the Muslims and tried to destroy lives of 20 million Muslims. Muslims were forced to drink alcohol, their mosques were destroyed and their Holy Book was burned. They thought that no one can challenge them, but Allah the most powerful punished them."

Sentiments based on Misinformation

The sentiments woven around misinformation have a few dimensions and they are discussed under these subheadings:

As eating habits: In the context of eating habits, Gaynor (2020), reported a spread of misinformation which emerged as a result of promoting a video showing a young Chinese woman biting into a bat, falsely suggesting it was shot in Wuhan and the outbreak was due to locals eating bats. The widely circulated video featured unrelated footage of Chinese travel blogger Wang Mengyun eating bat soup in the island country Palau in 2016 as part of an online travel programme. Wang later made an apology post on Weibo, where she revealed that she was inundated with abuse, such as death threats, and that she only wished to showcase local Palauan cuisine.

As man-made Bioweapon conspiracy: The spread of the news of the coronavirus outbreak as a manmade bioweapon is also a strong source of misinformation which puts the Chinese and United States (U.S.) governments at the center stage. With regard to China, the BBC published an article in January about coronavirus misinformation, citing two 24 January articles from the Washington Times which claimed the virus was part of a Chinese biological weapons programme, based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The Washington Post later published an article debunking the conspiracy theory, citing United States experts who explained why the Institute was not suitable for Bioweapon Research, that countries had abandoned Bioweapons as fruitless, and that there was no evidence that the virus was genetically engineered (The Washington Post, 2020). Similarly, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton and Francis Boyle, a law professor, suggested that the virus may have been a Chinese Bioweapon, while in the opinion of numerous medical experts there is no evidence for this. Radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh said the virus was probably “a ChiCom laboratory experiment” and that the Chinese were weaponizing the virus and media hysteria surrounding it to bring down Donald Trump (Washington Examiner, 2020). On the other hand, directing claims to the U.S., The Economist (2020), reported a conspiracy theory about COVID-19 being the CIA's creation to keep China down. Multiple conspiracy articles in Chinese from SARS-era resurfaced during the outbreak with altered details, claiming that SARS is biological warfare conducted by America against China. Some of these articles claim that BGI Group from China sold genetic information of the Chinese race to America, with America then being able to deploy the virus specifically targeting the gene of Chinese individuals.

As Spy operation: Scholars have alleged that the coronavirus was stolen from a Canadian virus research laboratory by Chinese scientists (Broderick, 2020). The CBC claimed their early report was distorted by misinformation, and that Eric Morrissette, chief of media relations for Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada said that conspiracy theory had "no factual basis". (Yates and Pauls, 2020)

As Population control scheme: Jordan Sather, a conspiracy theory YouTuber supporting the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory and the anti-vax movement, falsely claimed the outbreak was a population control scheme created by Pirbright Institute in England, and by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates (Broderick, 2020).

Nurse whistleblower: According to Ghaffary (2020), On 24 January, a video circulated online appearing to be of a nurse named Jin Hui in Hubei province describing a far direr situation in Wuhan than purported by Chinese officials. The video claims that more than 90,000 people have been infected with the virus in China, and the virus is starting the second mutation. The video attracted millions of views on various social media platforms and was mentioned in numerous online reports. However, the BBC noted that contrary to its English subtitles in one of the video's existing versions, the woman does not claim to be either a nurse or a doctor in the video and that her suit and mask do not match the ones worn by medical staff in Hubei. The video's claim of 90,000 infected cases was noted to be 'unsubstantiated'

Mustard patches and Goose Fat: In this regard, the Estonian Minister of the Interior Mart Helme stated at a government press conference that the common cold had been renamed as the coronavirus and that in his youth nothing like that existed. He recommended wearing warm socks and mustard patches as well as spreading goose fat on one's chest as treatments for the virus. Mart Helme also said that the virus would pass within a few days to a week just like the common cold (Vasli, 2020).

Industrial bleach: Sommer (2020) reported Some QAnon proponents, including Jordan Stather, and others, have promoted gargling "Miracle Mineral Supplement" actually an industrial bleach as a way of preventing or curing Coronavirus.

African resistance: The last and relatively interesting misinformation concerns the continent of Africa. Information spread via Facebook, implied that a Cameroonian student in China had been completely cured of the virus due to his African genetics. Other media sources have noted that no evidence supports the assumption that Africans are more resistant to the virus and labelled such claims as false information. (AFP Fact Check, 2020).

Some Efforts to address the problem of misinformation

Information is a social tool for family health, disease control and illness prevention. According to World Health Organization (2020) declaration on "massive infodemic", citing an over-abundance of reported information, accurate and false, about the virus that "makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it." The WHO stated that the high demand for timely and trustworthy information has incentivised the creation of a direct WHO 24/7 myth-busting hotline where its communication and social media teams have been monitoring and responding to misinformation through its website and social media pages.

To corroborate the above, Facebook, Twitter and Google said they were working with World Health Organization (WHO) to address "misinformation". In a blogpost, Facebook stated they would remove content flagged by leading global health organizations and local authorities that violate its content policy on misinformation leading to "physical harm" (Richtel, 2020).

Furthermore, in an attempt to provide enabling support to mitigate the damage of misinformation, Amazon banned over a million products that wrongly claimed to be able to cure or protect against coronavirus. They also removed tens of thousands of listings for overpriced health products

Conclusion

While Sinophobia and racist behaviours toward affected nations have been on the rise since the coronavirus outbreak, there are notable efforts against such trends to stop the stereotypes and discrimination. RADII (2020) reports a Chinese-Italian man who held up a plaque stating “I am not a virus” and gave “free hug” in a street in Italy.  Borrelli (2020), reports that President Sergio Mattarella made a surprise visit to a primary school in Rome where half of the pupils are Chinese as a show of support and solidarity, saying "Friendship and peace are fundamental and you know it."

The concept of race is often used in a biological sense to refer to a population sharing a genepool which gives rise to physical characteristics of distribution determined by heredity. Giving the physical and biological traits such as skin color, eye form and body build, there is no known differences in mental and social capacity. That means the concept of racism is superficial to social life. As seen on the discourse above, Sinophobia and Xenophobia is the very reason for unequal opportunity meted on those people who are not infected or dwell in high risk area but because of their nationality there. Thus, Sinophobia can drive people to hide the illness to avoid the discrimination and humiliation, it can prevent people from seeking health care immediately as symptom arise, it can discourage people from adopting healthy behaviors. 

Sociologically, there is only one race – the human race. Thus, apart from conditions of physical appearance in terms of color and body building all human beings are prone to diseases, natural disasters and mental health. As a result, racism is poor judgment and without scientific proofs. Whereas, the growth and productivity of society is anchored on interdependence, cultural relativity and handling the right information. we can keep healthy society by showing supportive behavior towards coronavirus.

Recommendations

i.                    The government at the Federal and State level should work to negate the novel coronavirus which mortality rate is not anywhere near ebolavirus, as such facility preparedness and information dissemination in the wake of the pandemic should be upheld, which mismanagement and corruption in the use of funds should be closely monitored throughout the process.

ii.                  Public stigmatization among specific population and the rise of harmful prejudice on the Chinese should be discouraged at all cost

iii.                The wearing of mask when taking care of patients suspected to be infected of the coronavirus in China and in other regions of confirmed cases, and upon finding solution such medical culture should be maintained to other infections which may spread coughing and sneezing

iv.                Citizens should be more patriotic and instill such socialization into young ones, to despise discrimination against the Chinese and people of other cultures.

v.                  Shun willful ignorance and scaremongering with life threatening issues, posting offensive articles online and airing views that are Sinophobia in nature, which in itself is worse than the virus

vi.                To avoid Sinophobia and all forms of Xenophobia, we must be thoughtful about the way we communicate on social media and on air platforms. We must all take precautions and obey the guidelines of governments and the World Health Organization. Washing of hands regularly with sanitizers, maintaining distance from people who are sick, and self-isolation for a period of fourteen days if an individual is suspected of being infected, and reporting every suspected cases to the ministry of health.

vii.              Lastly, this study lunches a campaign against Sinophobia and every form of Xenophobic racial discrimination with the hashtag #SayNoToSinophobia. This trend of this on social media will draw the attention of citizens about good and healthy relationship in the process of combating the coronavirus disease.

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 Written by John, Gospel Edoho