Is Coronavirus reigniting Yellow Peril?

It is paramount that official Coronavirus cautions be heeded in order to stifle contagion, but in a murky climate of mass media hysteria, we find the perfect breeding ground for misinformation.

WITH more than 100 people dead and thousands of confirmed cases worldwide, the Coronavirus outbreak has inevitably caused worldwide hysteria.

Currently there are six confirmed cases in Australia, four in New South Wales, one in Victoria and another in Queensland.

This global fear is not unusual, it’s one we’ve seen time and time again. In 2003 we witnessed it during the SARS epidemic, a few years later with Swine flu in 2009 and with ebola in 2014.

It is paramount that official health warnings be heeded in order to stifle the spread of the virus, but a murky climate like this is the perfect breeding ground for misinformation.

Videos featuring East-Asian people eating bizarre exotic things has added to the collective public fear, punctuating the Coronavirus news with extra unease. A video has recently resurfaced showing a man eating a supposed Chinese delicacy called “Three Squeaks” named after the sounds the rodents make before they are eaten.

According to online fact-checker Snopes, while rumours about this dish have been circulating for more than a decade, evidence of the actual existence of the food does not exist outside of the questionable videos.

Another recent re-emergence is the video of Wang Mengyun, Chinese influencer shown eating bat soup. In the wake of the Coronavirus news, multiple stories were published about this viral video despite the footage being filmed in Palau Micronesia, not Wuhan, let alone China.

The video was released in 2016 and is a segment taken from one of Mengyun’s travel vlogs.

To fan the flames of fear even further, a fake health statement later denounced by Queensland MP Duncan Pegg as a racist hoax, was released in Brisbane urging Queenslanders to avoid “all populated areas with Chinese nationals with a ratio of 1 to 3 non-Chinese Australians.”

This age-old disgust and fear that has simmered in the back of western minds has been reignited and is now at the forefront of our concerns, thinly veiled under the guise of Coronavirus updates.

Hysteria leads to misinformation and for the Coronavirus story, this misinformation feeds into western Yellow Peril.

Airline cabin crew seen wearing face masks in Brisbane International Airport. Picture: AAP Image/Darren England

This is a fear that is less national than it is racial, one that is less concerned about a specific source of danger but rather the fear of a “faceless, nameless horde of yellow people opposite the Western world”.

With its origins rooted in the late 19th century, this existential fear still permeates into the fabric of society today. Fear will inevitably blur the lines between Coronavirus updates with footage of faceless Asian bodies writhing in the streets, between videos of Asian people eating unorthodox food to hundreds of random Asian faces obscured in medical masks. It’s easy to forget what we’re supposed to be scared of. Is it the deadly virus that is currently devastating China and spreading worldwide? Or is it everything that the western world believes is wrong with China itself and that the virus is just a consequence of their undoing?

Our collective hysteria is a monster that is starved. And like any famished beast, we will eat what we can get, fact or fiction, whatever it takes to satiate our need for outrage and fear. At times like this it is important that we take official health warnings seriously. With so many lives lost it is important to stay updated and vigilant, to support the thousands of people around the world working tirelessly to aid the sick and prevent contagion.

It is also key to understand and consider what it is we’re actually fearful of. Because I guarantee you the terrified people in Wuhan are not merely a symptom of a problem that now burdens the west.