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Coronavirus resource center with up to date global and national data. Visit this site for a live tracker of Covid-19 cases.

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Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

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Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

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Johns Hopkins experts in global public health, infectious disease, and emergency preparedness have been at the forefront of the international response to COVID-19.

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How does your immune system work? - Emma Bryce

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Social Distancing & Flattening the Curve

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Social Distancing & Flattening the Curve

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Aggressive actions to prevent - or at least to slow - the spread of COVID-19 are being taken across the world. Universities are cancelling in-person classes, while academic conferences and political rallies are postponed. Shops are shuttering. Sports leagues are suspending seasons or competing in empty stadiums.

Such "social distancing" measures, as they are called by public health experts, are considered essential in controlling a viral pandemic ( SN: 3/11/20). What's not helpful at this point is banning travel from other affected countries, experts say, such as the U.S. ban on most European visitors announced March 11 by President Donald Trump.

"I recommend that people voluntarily cut back on non-essential travel" - a form of social distancing in that people would be avoiding crowded airports, train stations and bus depots, says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "But I do not expect that travel bans will meaningfully impact the trajectory of the outbreak."

The virus is probably more widespread than we realize in the United States, partly because early problems with testing meant cases likely slipped by undetected ( SN: 3/6/20). So U.S. health officials are most concerned now with limiting opportunities for transmission. That helps to prevent hospitals and clinics from becoming overwhelmed, as reportedly has happened in Italy as the number of confirmed cases shot beyond 10,000 in just two weeks.

Acting quickly to establish social distancing measures can "flatten the epidemic curve" of an outbreak, experts say. That means the outbreak spreads more slowly and reaches its peak later, with a lower number of active cases at the peak than if no preventive measures were taken.

Flattening the curve

As an epidemic progresses, cases grow exponentially before declining as the virus spreads through a population and people develop immunity. Without social distancing measures that limit opportunities for transmission, cases can spike quickly and outstrip the capacity of health systems. Social distancing measures, such as cancelling public gatherings and avoiding crowds, can slow the spread of the virus and spread cases out over a longer period of time, which can help hospitals provide care while avoiding being overwhelmed by patients.

Curve of epidemic disease incidence with and without protective measures

C. Chang

C. Chang

"As a nation, we can't be doing the kinds of things we were doing a few months ago," such as gathering in large groups, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., said in a news conference March 10. If we don't enact social distancing measures now, "we're going to be weeks behind, and the horse is going to be out of the barn."

Social distancing can take many forms. Individuals can wave hello instead of shaking hands, or avoid busy shops and crowds, in order to lower the risk of coming into contact with an infected person or contaminated surface. Communities can close schools or cancel public events. Social distancing isn't an all-or-nothing endeavor. Even small actions, like washing your hands, can help flatten the curve, experts say.

But it's not immediately clear how aggressive we need to be now, or how long social distancing measures should last. That's because we still don't have a good understanding of where the virus is or how it spreads. "These are serious unknowns, and it really complicates decision making," Rivers says. "There are no straightforward answers."

A tale of two cities

China's outbreak offers some evidence of the benefits of early social distancing. In the provincial capital of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in December, authorities waited six weeks after community spread had begun to forcibly quarantine the entire city of 8 million ( SN:1/23/20). Still, nearly 20,000 needed hospitalization simultaneously in the city, including about 2,000 in need of critical care, each day during the local peak of the epidemic in February.

But in the Chinese port city of Guangzhou, officials closed schools, banned large gatherings and isolated people confirmed to have the virus within just a week of detecting the first case in that city. That rapid action meant Guangzhou has never had to hospitalize more than 300 people at a time so far during the outbreak. And the case fatality rate in Guangzhou has been 0.8 percent, compared with Wuhan's 4.5 percent, according to a new study by Rivers and her colleagues that was posted online March 10 on Harvard University's DASH research repository and has yet to be peer reviewed.

Health facilities in many U.S. cities could handle an outbreak like that in Guangzhou, but not like the one in Wuhan, Rivers says. That's why "it's very important that we act early and with appropriate intensity to reduce transmission," she says. That also goes for young people, even though they are less at risk of developing serious illness. Young people "need to be worrying about it in the context of their larger community and thinking themselves as being part of that larger network," she says.

This is especially important because infected people without any symptoms can still spread the virus to others. One study posted March 5 at medRxiv.org, where researchers share their work before it's peer reviewed, estimated that roughly half of all virus transmissions in both Singapore and Tianjin, China, were from pre-symptomatic people..

Plus, the virus is "highly contagious," says Clemens Wendtner, director of infectious disease and tropical medicine at the Munich Clinic Schwabing, a teaching hospital in Germany. Infected patients can shed large amounts of virus from their noses and throats and in coughed-up phlegm before they develop symptoms as well as in the first week of symptoms, Wendtner and colleagues report in another small study posted March 8 at medRxiv.org. "This would tell us that gatherings of people should be avoided," he says.

Jump-starting social distancing

If people can transmit the virus before they are even aware that they are infected, measures like simply staying home if you're feeling sick won't be enough, says epidemiologist William Hanage at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

In the United States, "extreme interventions are going to be challenging, making it all the more important to start right away" with actions like cancelling public gatherings and asking people to work from home, Hanage says.

Communities also should prepare for schools closing, Hanage says. Though children don't seem as vulnerable to the virus as adults, kids are just as likely to get infected, according to a study posted at medRxiv.org March 4. Past flu outbreaks, as well as mathematical simulations, have shown school closures to be effective in flattening the outbreak curve and buying time to boost the capacity of health care systems.

But closing schools comes with costs. Many kids rely on school for regular meals, and many parents can't take time off of work to care for a kid forced to stay home. Some experts have argued that closing schools has limited social distancing benefits, since kids can still congregate outside of school. "These are difficult decisions, and communities should be planning now about how to meet the needs of children if schools have to close," Hanage says.

But while social distancing aims to limit opportunities for a virus to spread, travel bans are designed to stop its introduction into a community in the first place. It's far too late for that now in the United States, where the virus is almost certainly spreading undetected in the country, Hanage says.

"The great majority of new infections result from [community spread], not new introductions from elsewhere," he says. "So any impact of a travel ban is negligible in comparison with social distancing."

And that social distancing needs to happen now, even with scientists still working on determining how the disease spreads, how quickly it spreads and how deadly it really is, Hanage says. "We're later in this outbreak than we think."

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Jonathan Lambert is the staff writer for biological sciences, covering everything from the origin of species to microbial ecology. He has a master's degree in evolutionary biology from Cornell University.

Tina Hesman Saey is the senior staff writer and reports on molecular biology. She has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in science journalism from Boston University.

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Social distancing, not travel bans, is crucial to limiting coronavirus' spread

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Aggressive actions to prevent - or at least to slow - the spread of COVID-19 are being taken across the world. Universities are cancelling in-person classes, while academic conferences and political rallies are postponed. Shops are shuttering.

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Viruses and Bacteria: What's the difference and who cares anyway? - Plain and Simple

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The preview below does not show how amazing this resource is. Check it out!

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In the realm of infectious diseases, a pandemic is the worst case scenario. When an epidemic spreads beyond a country's borders, that's when the disease officially becomes a pandemic.

Communicable diseases existed during humankind's hunter-gatherer days, but the shift to agrarian life 10,000 years ago created communities that made epidemics more possible. Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, influenza, smallpox and others first appeared during this period.
READ MORE: See all pandemic coverage here.
The more civilized humans became, building cities and forging trade routes to connect with other cities, and waging wars with them, the more likely pandemics became. See a timeline below of pandemics that, in ravaging human populations, changed history.

430 B.C.: Athens

The earliest recorded pandemic happened during the Peloponnesian War. After the disease passed through Libya, Ethiopia and Egypt, it crossed the Athenian walls as the Spartans laid siege. As much as two-thirds of the population died.

The symptoms included fever, thirst, bloody throat and tongue, red skin and lesions. The disease, suspected to have been typhoid fever, weakened the Athenians significantly and was a significant factor in their defeat by the Spartans.

165 A.D.: Antonine Plague

The Antonine plague was possibly an early appearance of smallpox that began with the Huns. The Huns then infected the Germans, who passed it to the Romans and then returning troops spread it throughout the Roman empire. Symptoms included fever, sore throat, diarrhea and, if the patient lived long enough, pus-filled sores. This plague continued until about 180 A.D., claiming Emperor Marcus Aurelius as one of its victims.

250 A.D.: Cyprian Plague

Named after the first known victim, the Christian bishop of Carthage, the Cyprian plague entailed diarrhea, vomiting, throat ulcers, fever and gangrenous hands and feet.

City dwellers fled to the country to escape infection but instead spread the disease further. Possibly starting in Ethiopia, it passed through Northern Africa, into Rome, then onto Egypt and northward.

There were recurring outbreaks over the next three centuries. In 444 A.D., it hit Britain and obstructed defense efforts against the Picts and the Scots, causing the British to seek help from the Saxons, who would soon control the island.

541 A.D.: Justinian Plague

First appearing in Egypt, the Justinian plague spread through Palestine and the Byzantine Empire, and then throughout the Mediterranean.

The plague changed the course of the empire, squelching Emperor Justinian's plans to bring the Roman Empire back together and causing massive economic struggle. It is also credited with creating an apocalyptic atmosphere that spurred the rapid spread of Christianity.

Recurrences over the next two centuries eventually killed about 50 million people, 26 percent of the world population. It is believed to be the first significant appearance of the bubonic plague, which features enlarged lymphatic gland and is carried by rats and spread by fleas.

11th Century: Leprosy

Though it had been around for ages, leprosy grew into a pandemic in Europe in the Middle Ages, resulting in the building of numerous leprosy-focused hospitals to accommodate the vast number of victims.

A slow-developing bacterial disease that causes sores and deformities, leprosy was believed to be a punishment from God that ran in families. This belief led to moral judgments and ostracization of victims. Now known as Hansen's disease, it still afflicts tens of thousands of people a year and can be fatal if not treated with antibiotics.

1350: The Black Death

Responsible for the death of one-third of the world population, this second large outbreak of the bubonic plague possibly started in Asia and moved west in caravans. Entering through Sicily in 1347 A.D. when plague sufferers arrived in the port of Messina, it spread throughout Europe rapidly. Dead bodies became so prevalent that many remained rotting on the ground and created a constant stench in cities.

England and France were so incapacitated by the plague that the countries called a truce to their war. The British feudal system collapsed when the plague changed economic circumstances and demographics. Ravaging populations in Greenland, Vikings lost the strength to wage battle against native populations, and their exploration of North America halted.

1492: The Columbian Exchange

Following the arrival of the Spanish in the Caribbean, diseases such as smallpox, measles and bubonic plague were passed along to the native populations by the Europeans. With no previous exposure, these diseases devastated indigenous people, with as many as 90 percent dying throughout the north and south continents.

Upon arrival on the island of Hispaniola, Christopher Columbus encountered the Taino people, population 60,000. By 1548, the population stood at less than 500. This scenario repeated itself throughout the Americas.

In 1520, the Aztec Empire was destroyed by a smallpox infection. The disease killed many of its victims and incapacitated others. It weakened the population so they were unable to resist Spanish colonizers and left farmers unable to produce needed crops.

Research in 2019 even concluded that the deaths of some 56 million Native Americans in the 16th and 17th centuries, largely through disease, may have altered Earth's climate as vegetation growth on previously tilled land drew more CO2 from the atmosphere and caused a cooling event.
READ MORE: How Colonization's Death Toll May Have Affected Earth's Climate
1665: The Great Plague of London

In another devastating appearance, the bubonic plague led to the deaths of 20 percent of London's population. As human death tolls mounted and mass graves appeared, hundreds of thousands of cats and dogs were slaughtered as the possible cause and the disease spread through ports along the Thames. The worst of the outbreak tapered off in the fall of 1666, around the same time as another destructive event-the Great Fire of London.

1817: First Cholera Pandemic

The first of seven cholera pandemics over the next 150 years, this wave of the small intestine infection originated in Russia, where one million people died. Spreading through feces-infected water and food, the bacterium was passed along to British soldiers who brought it to India where millions more died. The reach of the British Empire and its navy spread cholera to Spain, Africa, Indonesia, China, Japan, Italy, Germany and America, where it killed 150,000 people. A vaccine was created in 1885, but pandemics continued.

1855: The Third Plague Pandemic

Starting in China and moving to India and Hong Kong, the bubonic plague claimed 15 million victims. Initially spread by fleas during a mining boom in Yunnan, the plague is considered a factor in the Parthay rebellion and the Taiping rebellion. India faced the most substantial casualties, and the epidemic was used as an excuse for repressive policies that sparked some revolt against the British. The pandemic was considered active until 1960 when cases dropped below a couple hundred.

1875: Fiji Measles Pandemic

After Fiji ceded to the British Empire, a royal party visited Australia as a gift from Queen Victoria. Arriving during a measles outbreak, the royal party brought the disease back to their island, and it was spread further by the tribal heads and police who met with them upon their return.

Spreading quickly, the island was littered with corpses that were scavenged by wild animals, and entire villages died and were burned down, sometimes with the sick trapped inside the fires. One-third of Fiji's population, a total of 40,000 people, died.

1889: Russian Flu

The first significant flu pandemic started in Siberia and Kazakhstan, traveled to Moscow, and made its way into Finland and then Poland, where it moved into the rest of Europe. By the following year, it had crossed the ocean into North America and Africa. By the end of 1890, 360,000 had died.

1918: Spanish Flu

The avian-borne flu that resulted in 50 million deaths worldwide, the 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world (there is no universal consensus regarding where the virus originated). At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Wire service reports of a flu outbreak in Madrid in the spring of 1918 led to the pandemic being called the " Spanish flu."

By October, hundreds of thousands of Americans died and body storage scarcity hit crisis level. But the flu threat disappeared in the summer of 1919 when most of the infected had either developed immunities or died.
READ MORE: Why October 1918 Was America's Deadliest Month Ever
1957: Asian flu

Starting in Hong Kong and spreading throughout China and then into the United States, the Asian flu became widespread in England where, over six months, 14,000 people died. A second wave followed in early 1958, causing an estimated total of about 1.1 million deaths globally, with 116,000 deaths in the United States alone. A vaccine was developed, effectively containing the pandemic.

1981: HIV/AIDS

First identified in 1981, AIDS destroys a person's immune system, resulting in eventual death by diseases that the body would usually fight off. Those infected by the HIV virus encounter fever, headache, and enlarged lymph nodes upon infection. When symptoms subside, carriers become highly infectious through blood and genital fluid, and the disease destroys t-cells.

AIDS was first observed in American gay communities but is believed to have developed from a chimpanzee virus from West Africa in the 1920s. The disease, which spreads through certain body fluids, moved to Haiti in the 1960s, and then New York and San Francisco in the 1970s.

Treatments have been developed to slow the progress of the disease, but 35 million people worldwide have died of AIDS since its discovery, and a cure is yet to be found.

2003: SARS

First identified in 2003 after several months of cases, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is believed to have possibly started with bats, spread to cats and then to humans in China, followed by 26 other countries, infecting 8,096 people, with 774 deaths.

SARS is characterized by respiratory problems, dry cough, fever and head and body aches and is spread through respiratory droplets from coughs and sneezes.

Quarantine efforts proved effective and by July, the virus was contained and hasn't reappeared since. China was criticized for trying to suppress information about the virus at the beginning of the outbreak.

SARS was seen by global health professionals as a wake-up call to improve outbreak responses, and lessons from the pandemic were used to keep diseases like H1N1, Ebola and Zika under control.

2019: COVID-19

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 virus was officially a pandemic after barreling through 114 countries in three months and infecting over 118,000 people. And the spread wasn't anywhere near finished.

COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus strain that had not been previously found in people. Symptoms include respiratory problems, fever and cough, and can lead to pneumonia and death. Like SARS, it's spread through droplets in the air produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

The first reported case in China appeared November 17, 2019, in the Hubei Province, but went unrecognized. Eight more cases appeared in December with researchers pointing to an unknown virus.

Many learned about COVID-19 when ophthalmologist Dr. Li Wenliang defied government orders and released safety information to other doctors. The following day, China informed WHO and charged Li with a crime. Li died from COVID-19 just over a month later.

The virus spread beyond Chinese borders to nearly every country in the world. By December 2020, it had infected more than 75 million people and led to more than 1.6 million deaths worldwide.

Funding and political will in the United States and around the world accelerated the development of vaccines to fight the virus and by December 11, 2020, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the use of the first COVID-19 vaccine. A week later the government agency approved a second, and by February 2021, Americans had access to three FDA-approved vaccines. By December 2021, 71 percent of the U.S. population had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Despite the new vaccines (which all eventually gained full FDA approval), COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to rise as new variants of the virus emerged and some Americans remained reluctant to become vaccinated. As of December, 2021, the confirmed U.S. COVID-19 death toll had surpassed 800,000.

SOURCES

Disease and History by Frederick C. Cartwright, published by Sutton Publishing, 2014.

Disease: The Story of Disease and Mankind's Continuing Struggle Against It by Mary Dobson, published by Quercus, 2007.

Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues by Ed, Joseph P. Byrne, published by Greenwood Press, 2008.

Influenza, The American Experience.

Source Book of Medical History, Logan Clendening, published by Dover Publications, 1960.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Pandemics That Changed History: Timeline

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As human civilizations rose, these pandemic diseases, from the bubonic plague to smallpox to influenza, struck them down.

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What Made The Black Death (The Plague) so Deadly?

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How we conquered the deadly smallpox virus - Simona Zompi

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Why Pandemics Like COVID-19 Keep Happening

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Everything you need to know about the coronavirus - explained in just one minute.

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from the Centers for Disease Control

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COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19) - February Update - causes, symptoms, diagnosis, pathology

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Created by Avi Schiffmann, a high school student

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Live coronavirus dashboard tracker. See data, maps, social media trends, and learn about prevention measures.

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How coronavirus cases exploded in South Korean churches and hospitals

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How coronavirus cases exploded in South Korean churches and hospitals

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How coronavirus cases exploded in South Korean churches and hospitals

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Malaka Gharib

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Updated on March 16 at 1:56 p.m. ET. This comic has been updated. Click here for the newest version.
Kids, this comic is for you.

It's based on a radio story that NPR education reporter Cory Turner did. He asked some experts what kids might want to know about the new coronavirus discovered in China.

To make this comic, we've used his interviews with Tara Powell at the University of Illinois School of Social Work, Joy Osofsky at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans and Krystal Lewis at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Print and fold a zine version of this comic here. Here are directions on how to fold it. To read this comic in Chinese, click here.To read it in Spanish, click here.

Malaka Gharib is an NPR editor and the author and illustrator of I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir, about being first-generation Filipino Egyptian American.

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Just For Kids: A Comic Exploring The New Coronavirus

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You may have heard the word "coronavirus" online or on TV. You probably have a lot of questions. Check out our comic to get some answers - and print out a zine version at home.

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Quarantined Italians are Singing Their Hearts Out.

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Quarantined Italians are Singing Their Hearts Out.

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Music is one of the oldest human art forms, if not the oldest human art form. We can never actually know which artform holds that distinction, but it seems darned likely that our ancient ancestors, sitting around their fires at night, realized they could bend their voices into pitches that sounded lovely together and turned those pitches into songs.

Which is all to say that music is one of the ways we feel connected. Singing and dancing are present at nearly every life celebration in some capacity or another, and whether you're in the car or hanging out at the beach or just doing nothing, there's no better way to make the time pass than listening to your favorite album. But even better than that is experiencing music with other people, whether at a concert or in a club.

The Covid-19 coronavirus - and the associated social distancing that nearly everyone on the planet is being encouraged to practice - will presumably hinder people from making and listening to music together, but tweets from all over Italy (which is under heavy lockdown) reveal a country where citizens are taking to their balconies and windows to enjoy music together.

They might be performing an impromptu song with instruments and multiple vocalists, as in this video from Sicily:

Or they might be singing a beloved anthem about their fair city of Siena:

Or they might just be dancing to "The Macarena":

There are many more examples of Italians entertaining themselves and each other with balcony concerts in this thread. Looking through it just might make you remember there's something beautiful about our ability to find silver linings even in very dark times. Stay safe, everybody. And if you have a balcony, sing.

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Watch: Quarantined Italians are singing their hearts out. It's beautiful.

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Music is one of the oldest human art forms, if not the oldest human art form. We can never actually know which artform holds that distinction, but it seems darned likely that our ancient ancestors, sitting around their fires at night, realized they could bend their voices into pitches that sounded lovely together and turned those pitches into songs.

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Before-and-after aerial photos show how coronavirus is changing life in America

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Before-and-after aerial photos show how coronavirus is changing life in America

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In just a few short weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has completely changed life in America.

Almost no one is visiting the Statue of Liberty. Ice rinks in New York City are abandoned. The parking lots of once-bustling New England ski resorts are empty. Airports are devoid of planes, while rental car parking lots are chock full.

This transformation is eerily evident in satellite images captured by the private space firm Maxar Technologies. The photos, which Maxar shared with Vox, show five popular locations across the country both before and after the outbreak. Collectively, they show a country grinding to a halt as people stay inside and avoid large crowds to prevent the further spread of Covid-19.

It's a startling sign of the impact social distancing is having on the United States, both economically and in terms of the normalcy of everyday life. As fewer people fly, visit cultural sites, and go on vacation, parts of America are, in essence, turning into ghost towns. And while such measures are necessary to slow the outbreak that is ravaging other countries, it's still stunning to see.

The satellite images showing the dramatic changes taking place throughout the country are below.

Bethesda Fountain and Terrace, New York City

Salt Lake City International Airport, Utah

Statue of Liberty, New York City

Rental car facility at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Arizona

Killington Ski Resort, Vermont

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Before-and-after aerial photos show how coronavirus is changing life in America

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In just a few short weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has completely changed life in America. Almost no one is visiting the Statue of Liberty. Ice rinks in New York City are abandoned. The parking lots of once-bustling New England ski resorts are empty. Airports are devoid of planes, while rental car parking lots are chock full.

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Just a few weeks ago, China was overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan. Since then, it has drastically reduced the number of new cases, flattening the curve.

South Korea appears to be headed on a similar path.

These charts track the number of new confirmed cases each day. Each red line is the seven-day moving average, which smooths out day-to-day anomalies in how the data are reported by authorities. The number of cases in China had a big jump in mid-February because officials changed the way cases were counted.

Despite their close proximity to China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, have managed to keep the number of cases down with some success, through vigilant monitoring and early intervention.

But recent spikes in those countries suggest that they are still at risk. For example, 21 of the 23 new cases in Taiwan and at least 13 of the new cases in Hong Kong on Wednesday were people who had recently traveled overseas.

More countries are now implementing travel bans or mandatory quarantine for returning travelers, as the pandemic continues to ravage the world, sickening more than 210,000 people as of Wednesday evening.

In the United States and five other countries, the number of known coronavirus cases is still growing rapidly. They have all reported more than 4,000 new cases in the past week.

These five countries have had less severe outbreaks so far but still reported more than 1,000 new cases each in the past week.

Where Countries Are on the Curve

Here's a look at the trajectories of coronavirus cases in all of the countries that have had more than 50 confirmed cases so far. Scales are adjusted in each country to make the curve more readable. The countries are sorted by the number of new cases in the past week.

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Which Country Has Flattened the Curve for the Coronavirus?

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Just a few weeks ago, China was overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan. Since then, it has drastically reduced the number of new cases, flattening the curve. South Korea appears to be headed on a similar path. These charts track the number of new confirmed cases each day.

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A Chinese-American teenager on what she and her friends are encountering during the outbreak.

Video

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transcript

Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School

A Chinese-American teenager on what she and her friends are encountering during the outbreak.

"Everyone knows Chinese people are disgusting." "They'll eat any type of animal." "They're dirty." That's what my classmate said, just days after the Coronavirus outbreak started in the United States. It felt like a stab to my chest. I'm Chinese-American, and this is someone that I've gone to school with for almost three years, who I consider a friend. But it's no wonder that she feels this way. "An obscure virus arising from a meat market in eastern China." As the Coronavirus spreads, there's another virus spreading that we need to be talking about. "A woman who's Asian says she was punched by another woman in midtown Manhattan and she accused her of having the Covid-19 virus." "I don't want him [inaudible] me. Tell him to move." Young Asian-Americans like me are feeling hate infect every part of our lives. "And I'd like to just ask the Chinese for a formal apology." Not only do we have to be afraid about our health. But we have to be afraid about being ourselves. Class basically just started. One of the girls said all Chinese people were disgusting. And so I literally like raised my hand up and was like "I'm Chinese." She didn't even say sorry. She didn't. She just like blew past it I guess. And then she like kept going on about it. I never knew it would happen to me, especially at this school. Good morning. Morning. Yeah, basically this Chinese restaurant was like texting their customers saying none of our staff have been to China. We have no contact with the Coronavirus. Please like like, come back to us. And people were like making fun of it. There are thousands and thousands of cases in Italy. But no one's boycotting Olive Garden. No seriously like, no one is boycotting a mom and pop's pizza place. Like it's the same thing. Historically, pandemics have stoked xenophobia. In the 19th century, people spread rumors that Irish immigrants carried cholera, and tuberculosis was known as the "Jewish disease." In 1900, when a Chinese man supposedly died of the plague in San Francisco, Chinatown residents were forcibly quarantined by police, while white residents were allowed to leave the area. It seems like since the start of the Coronavirus outbreak schools have been a Petri dish for racism. It's dangerous to normalize behavior like this for people my age. So you just spoke with the other student. So can you tell me what happened? She understood my frustration and anger. They didn't really mean to say that. And they were actually making a generalization. And so she apologized to me basically. And I really appreciated it. Coronavirus may have originated in China. But the disease doesn't discriminate in the way that people do. It's extremely important that people have accurate information on how to stay safe. So we can kill this virus without spreading another one.

A Chinese-American teenager on what she and her friends are encountering during the outbreak. Credit Credit... The New York Times

What happens when stereotypes and fear about Covid-19 arrive before the actual disease does? In the video above, Katherine Oung, a 11th grader in Florida, shows what teenagers like her and her friends face as the coronavirus pandemic brings to the surface the racism underlying her community.

Katherine Oung (@kathoung) is a high school student in West Palm Beach, Fla.

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Opinion | Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School (Published 2020)

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A Chinese-American teenager on what she and her friends are encountering during the outbreak. What happens when stereotypes and fear about Covid-19 arrive before the actual disease does? In the video above, Katherine Oung, a 11th grader in Florida, shows what teenagers like her and her friends face as the coronavirus pandemic brings to the surface the racism underlying her community.

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Gabriel Bertram Bellinghausen via Wikimedia Commons

In June 1899, the steamer Nippon Maru arrived at Honolulu carrying one passenger who had died during the trans-Pacific voyage. The Hawaii Board of Health immediately quarantined the ship for a week as a precaution against the bubonic plague, which was then ravaging much of Asia. The freighter departed for San Francisco without further fatalities, but rats and fleas aboard the ship managed to break the quarantine. In December, plague took a first victim in Honolulu's crowded Chinatown.

The epidemic that reached Honolulu had originated in China in the 1870s, spreading slowly until it reached the commercial cities of Guangzhou and then Hong Kong in 1899. Steamships may not have been as fast as modern jetliners, but they still linked Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas into a global economy - and a global disease network. Honolulu, booming as a Pacific entrepôt, was especially determined to fend off what many saw as an Asiatic threat.

Disease outbreaks are often racialized and made vehicles for nativist beliefs and ethnic hatreds. In 2020, some commentators continue to misleadingly and dangerously call Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, the "Chinese flu" - a term that has helped to trigger anti-Asian harassment in the United States and Europe. That rhetoric has been encouraged by some conservative political leaders: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy prefers "Chinese coronavirus," while Mike Pompeo insists on "Wuhan coronavirus." President Donald Trump has frequently vowed to defend Americans against a "foreign virus." As this March 17 tweet from a CBS reporter indicates, other, less-veiled terms appear to be circulating at the White House.

This morning a White House official referred to #Coronavirus as the "Kung-Flu" to my face. Makes me wonder what they're calling it behind my back.
- Weijia Jiang (@weijia) March 17, 2020

Racism was even more blatant at the turn of the 20th century. Noting that white people in Asia were less likely to contract plague than were locals, so-called experts attributed the difference to inherent racial superiority and proper European habits rather than economic advantage and colonial privilege. Historian James Mohr, author of the 2004 book Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown, described how one Honolulu resident spoke for many when she optimistically wrote that "plague seldom attacks clean white people."

Asian immigrant communities in the cities of the American West in that era were already viewed as exotic nuisances, easy to romanticize for tourists and easy to raid in vice crackdowns. Police officials could stand four-square for virtue by raiding opium parlors and back rooms where Asian gamblers played fan tan while ignoring more-numerous gambling joints and saloons with white customers. Tour guides in San Francisco manufactured a fake narrative of danger and depravity, leading visitors on rambles through Chinatown basements and hiring local residents as fake denizens of opium dens. Novelist Frank Norris titled an 1897 article about San Francisco's Chinese neighborhood "The Third Circle," in a reference to Dante's seven circles of hell, and called the neighborhood a "noisome swamp." The very existence of Chinatowns in cities like Vancouver, Portland, and San Francisco gave residents of European heritage the thrill of confronting the "other" while remaining firmly in charge.

It was a short step from seeing Asians as a social threat to fearing that the segregated communities in which they lived - undeniably crowded and unsanitary in many cases - posed physical dangers as sources of disease. These fears came to a climax in Honolulu, whose "Chinatown" housed 3,000 Chinese, 1,500 Japanese, and 1,000 Native Hawaiian residents in densely packed two-story wooden buildings, backyard shacks, and shanties with little fresh water and terrible sanitation. When plague appeared in December 1899, public health officials first quarantined the neighborhood, responding simultaneously to concrete epidemiological concerns and to fears that Asian residents might contaminate the entire community. Hard-working Chinese and Japanese saw the action as one more example of race-based discrimination. In a blog post for Oxford University Press last week, Mohr observed:

Since the early victims were Chinese, ugly cries arose for the destruction of all Asian neighborhoods on the pretext that they seemed to be breeding grounds for plague; blaming victims and increased hostility toward minorities had been hallmarks of health-related panics since ancient times.

The Board of Health also attempted to sanitize with fire, burning buildings where plague victims had died. On January 20, 1900, a controlled burn roared out of control, consuming a fifth of Honolulu's buildings and the homes of 5,000 people. White residents who had come to gawk at the fire also gathered with baseball bats and pick handles, to ensure that the fire victims ended up in tightly controlled refugee camps.

The Honolulu fire was a particularly vivid illustration of how Americans apply racialized assumptions of disease transmission, but many others can be found throughout the 20th century. In some cases, public health panics disguise other motives. The Board of Health in Reno, Nevada, razed most of that city's Chinatown in 1908 in the name of cleanliness and morality, conveniently making land available for redevelopment. When bubonic plague appeared in Los Angeles in 1924, authorities quarantined the Mexican-American neighborhood south of downtown, destroying hundreds of homes in the name of sanitation. In his book Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past, historian William Deverell writes that "the destruction of these homes and shacks was part of an overall plan," in which Mexican-American residents were first declared to be public health nuisances so that no compensation would need to be paid.

The Reno and Los Angeles actions had the same effect as the destruction of black Tulsa in 1921, eliminating competition and promoting real estate development, minus the murdering mobs. And it's not a long reach from the real public health threats of plague to the metaphorical disease of "blight" that disproportionately afflicted African-American and Latino neighborhoods in the urban renewal era.

Unlike Reno and Los Angeles, the actions in Honolulu were ill-fated but not explicitly malign. Burning Chinatown was a tragic accident, not a plan. The disaster reflected ignorance as well as racism: Unfamiliar with plague, health officials deployed quarantine measures that had worked against cholera a few years earlier, unaware that the diseases are transmitted differently. After the fire, the plague slowly subsided, although it appeared at Kahului on Maui, where another small Chinatown was burned in February. Some Japanese and Chinese residents rebuilt on the ashes, but many dispersed into other parts of Honolulu. The U.S. government eventually provided partial compensation for property losses.

At the same time, officials could not escape their belief that racial minorities and outsiders were responsible for spreading the "foreign bacillus" from China among white Americans. Among certain leaders, that same reflexive understanding seems to be alive and well today.

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The 'Chinese Flu' Is Part of a Long History of Racializing Disease

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In June 1899, the steamer Nippon Maru arrived at Honolulu carrying one passenger who had died during the trans-Pacific voyage. The Hawaii Board of Health immediately quarantined the ship for a week as a precaution against the bubonic plague, which was then ravaging much of Asia.

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Asian Americans See Racism Amid Coronavirus Panic

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Asian Americans See Racism Amid Coronavirus Panic

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Asian Americans see racism, discrimination amid coronavirus panic