How to Spread Coronavirus

by Alexandra Brewis and Amber Wutich

Scared of coronavirus? Don’t be. Right now, in the U.S., there’s actually more reason to be scared of the people who are afraid of coronavirus.

This is because growing fears toward groups associated with emerging epidemic diseases act to hasten disease spread. This may seem counterintuitive, but it is all because of the way stigma undermines effective public health responses. For coronavirus, that stigma is targeting people from China. It is happening all over, including at Arizona State, our own university campus, which is also the site of the first reported case in the U.S. Asian students report that they have felt judged as possibly contagious (Piestch 2020). Such feelings of being judged tend to discourage people who may be infected from coming forward. Stigma also leads to misinformation about disease risk and prevention.

Infectious disease outbreaks have long led to discriminatory treatment toward minority communities. Chinese migrants, in particular, have been unfairly targeted in outbreaks at least as far back as the San Francisco plague outbreak in the early 1900s. From such historical cases, when minorities in the U.S. have been targeted, we know what to do to spread an epidemic like coronavirus faster.

Here are three steps to making the world sicker:

1. Fight the people who are sick, not the disease. The easiest way to fan an epidemic is to focus on people, not the disease, as the problem. The World Health Organization just took an important step when it officially named the new Coronavirus COVID-19 (BBC News 2020). As Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh pointed out, there is “purposely no link in the name to China or Wuhan to avoid the stigma that comes with being associated with an outbreak.” The WHO announcement focused on the need to fight the disease globally.

2. Focus on what’s gone wrong, not what’s working in frontline efforts. Global media coverage of infectious disease outbreaks tends to concentrate on what’s gone wrong. Especially when the outbreak originates in a non-Western country, such coverage too often emphasizes poor hospital conditions and public health mistakes in ways that are subtly condescending or racist. The solution is to highlight what’s working: innovations that fight the disease, insights that help us understand its transmission and treatment, and public health interventions that work. Gabriel Leung, Chair of Public Health Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, is doing just that as he advises the WHO in its response to COVID-19 (The Guardian, 2020). Leung urges us to consider: “Have these massive public health interventions, social distancing, and mobility restrictions worked in China? If so, how can we roll them out…?”

3. Sideline activists and others from the most affected communities. The Asian students at ASU and others around the U.S. are now speaking out about their experiences of stigma in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak. Chinese students, for example, report that their classmates exclude them or surround them to shout, “Get tested for Coronavirus.” We need to support those who are speaking up. And listen to those who are alerting us to the spread and impact of stigma.

The consequences of letting stigma flourish during an infectious disease outbreak are well-known: It spurs disease spread and limits treatment-seeking. The good news is that there’s much that everyone can do to support public health efforts, including actively fighting anti-Chinese stigma. It will help us all stay safe as we forestall the wider global spread of COVID-19.