Hopkins in Quarantine Day 6

Welp we’re still locked up here. I mean, not that it is a huge surprise. There have been a few foreigners snapping recently and running out of their apartments and kicking/ignoring security. Yeah…they’ve all been escorted out of China.

I suppose in some ways this entire quarantine/isolation measure is a great way to determine just how dedicated Expats are here in regards to A: Their Job. B: China. Being stuck in one place for two weeks is objectively horrible. Heck I wish I could go outside, hop on my scooter and dart around the streets. But I realize this would put myself, my family and my community in danger. Instead I must endure and consider from this experience just how:

A: Just how pro-China I am

B: Just how afraid of the Virus I am.

C: Just how bored I am.

Katy has been telling me and showing me news stories published here in China about Expats (foreigners) being rather crappy and actively ignoring quarantine rules. Even stomping out of their apartment after being put into a similar position as me and Katy. Now 6 days in I can appreciate the sense of isolation/dread/fury/desire to get out, but what I can not process is how someone could be that stupid. I mean, just to work and live in China as a foreigner you need some form of post-secondary education. Consequently no one working out here can really claim to be uneducated/stupid…and yet…We’ve got foreigners screaming and running around security guards. Foreigners who are out of quarantine utterly refusing to wear masks. Doesn’t make the rest of us look good, I often hear about a rising anti-foreigner rhetoric amongst people here and I’ve never seen it. Yet I can totally see how some foreigners behavior could encourage it. China has tried so hard to repress this disease and now the only people causing it are returning foreigners like myself. Annoyance against foreigners in China makes more sense to me than people in Canada dragging Asian-looking people out of grocery stores because…racism?

The before mentioned Canadian-Asian was dragged out of a Metro (solidly middle class grocery store in Canada) because they were wearing a mask. Now I will admit that the masks are functionally not as useful/life saving as a lot of people make them out to be. They are uncomfortable/hot, and make you touch your face a lot more than you normally would. Furthermore there is no concrete evidence suggesting they protect you from anything. ALL THAT SAID HOWEVER. It’s important to consider the role the medical mask plays in Asia. When a Chinese or Japanese person get’s sick the put on one of these masks. Not because they are horrified by how infectious they are-but because they feel responsible/duty-bound to not infect other people as much as possible. The mask is…in an admittedly strange way a form of what can only be described as patriotism/solidarity out here. A way to tell others: “I may or may not have this virus, but I’ve taken action to not infect you.”

It’s why I feel so…quite frankly, angry. When I see news stories out of Canada about Asian-Canadian’s being forcibly dragged out of convenient stores in Canada just because they are A: Canadian-Chinese. B: Wearing a mask. I mean let’s be real here. The mild-to-extreme racism tied to this virus is just silly/absurd. Did anyone call Swine Flu the USA-VIRUS NUMBER 1? Did anyone call Ebola the Sub-Saharan Virus? Heck no. I will admit, as a white-Canadian, I’m not really in a strong position to point out and rail against the onslaught of anti-Chinese behavior that seems to be spiking in Canada. That said, in me and Katy’s brief time in Canada, we had family refusing to see us because we live in China now (Even though we had been outside of China for 8 weeks!) . So in a decidedly small way, I feel like I’ve gotten a taste of what baseless/idiotic prejudice feels like. Nothing more than a taste, but enough to see just how asinine and ridiculous some people in the West have been about this virus.

The reality is that this virus doesn’t give a damn about your ethnicity. No country inexplicably created it (If it was a real bio-weapon we’d see a loooooot more deaths at this point, so shut up you wacky conspiracy-theorists!). It did start in China, but then, why does that matter? Pandemic’s a beautiful and horrible opportunity for humanity to shed it’s illogical walls. Arguably the best way to deal with a threat like this would be for all countries to fluidly communicate/pass laws together which would help limit the spread based upon evidence and experience. I mean, this thing has been bouncing around for 2 months and we’ve still got the President acting as if it’s all a surprise and one countries fault? It’s absurd. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, when the Aliens descended in Independence Day, the American’s didn’t try and blame India. No they haphazardly worked together to deal with an unforeseen threat. If any positive comes out of this whole experience I really do hope that it’s a greater sense of global cooperation to prevent virus’ in the future. Corona is no joke, but it could be a great testing ground for our governments, a way for them to consider how they respond to a more dangerous pandemic in the future. I hate fear mongering, but I think we can all assume that there will be another, perhaps far more viral virus in the future. Heh…alliteration.

As for me and the rest of the Hopkins’ we’re just locked in our apartment for a further 8 days and can’t do anything other than observe. All we can really do is recommend that you our friends out side of China try to take this seriously and stay at home as long as possible. This is not out of a desire to make others suffer as we have, it is just to see this nonsense ended as soon as possible. Me and Katy really do hope that the strictness of China is not necessary…but apart of us does worry if no countries outside of China will be able to duplicate just what they’ve done here in the last 2 months. Right now it seems for every school shutting in the USA. you’ve got 65,000 teenagers descending upon Florida for Spring Break.

Oh well…

I just want to go back to my classroom. -_-;