Asians & Covid-19
Let's attack the virus, not our neighbors - #iamnotavirus
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image by: Asia Democracy Research Network
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COVID’s Outsize Impact on Asian Americans Is Being Ignored
Headlines, health experts and policy makers rarely talk about COVID and Asian American disparities. Yet reports show that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) suffer from disproportionately high COVID death rates and hospitalizations. To make matters worse, their suffering remains largely overlooked in a form of invisible but deadly racial bias.
In an analysis of 50 million U.S. patients, Asians were most likely to die from COVID and to be hospitalized compared to white patients, according to a September 2020 report from Kaiser Family Foundation and Epic Health Research Network.
Media outlets did not flag COVID’s impact on Asian Americans. Yet among patients who…
Resources
For Asian Americans, a Dual Pandemic of COVID-19 and Racism
Racism against people of Asian descent is not a new problem, but it’s been exacerbated of late by politicians using racist rhetoric to describe the coronavirus. Asians in America are now facing a dual pandemic: a heightened fear of racist abuse, from verbal slurs to physical assault, on top of all the anxiety of living through COVID-19.
I Am Not a Virus: Q&A with Founder Mike Keo
As the coronavirus began to make it's presence known in the US, Asian and Asian Americans all over the country began experiencing harassment and abuse related to the coronavirus. In Connecticut, photographer Mike Keo had a personal experience with it when a member of his family was targeted. So he decided to do something about it. He started an online campaign fueled by photographs he shot in his studio tagged with the meme: #IAmNotAVirus.
'I Will Not Stand Silent.' 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality
Diseases and outbreaks have long been used to rationalize xenophobia: HIV was blamed on Haitian Americans, the 1918 influenza pandemic on German Americans, the swine flu in 2009 on Mexican Americans. The racist belief that Asians carry disease goes back centuries.
Asian American Subgroups And The COVID-19 Experience: What We Know And Still Don’t Know.
Growing evidence suggests that the pandemic is disproportionately affecting Asian Americans especially when compared to their White peers. In an analysis of 50 million patients in the EPIC health system, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation reported that Asians were twice as likely to test positive for COVID-19 than Whites, 60 percent more likely to be hospitalized, and 50 percent more likely to die.
Asian healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic: a long road to recovery
Asian healthcare workers have experienced racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, including from the medical community, with potentially long-term consequences for those affected.
Black And Asian People More Likely To Catch Covid-19 In U.S. And U.K., Study Finds
Black people are twice as likely to be infected with Covid-19 as white people, and Asian people are one and a half times more likely, according to new research examining data from nearly 19 million Covid-19 patients in the U.S. and U.K., findings that augment prior reports that people of color in Western countries are disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gene common in south Asian people doubles risk of Covid death, study finds
Scientists have identified a gene that doubles the risks of respiratory failure and death from Covid and could explain why people of south Asian heritage are more vulnerable to the disease.
Gene commonly found in south Asian people affects COVID severity – new study
But the results of this study are important because they tell us that part of the higher risk in some ethnic groups, such as people of south Asian heritage, is biological.
How Asia Became a Delta Hot Spot
A region that was on an upward trajectory has seen its prospects for progress badly damaged by the coronavirus.
How Pacific Islanders have been left to fend for themselves in the pandemic
Covid-19 data often lumps Pacific Islanders in with Asian Americans. But in the states where they’re separated out, their death rates are often the highest.
Indigenous communities have moved powwows to the internet
Social distance powwows are another example of Indigenous communities adapting to crisis.
Racist harassment of Asian health care workers won’t cure coronavirus
Violent hate crimes against Asian Americans have surged across the United States recently due to xenophobic perceptions that all Asian people are carriers of COVID-19. But some forms of harassment have been directed specifically at the Asian physicians and nurses risking their own health and safety to battle the spread of the virus in hospitals across the country.
The long history of US racism against Asian Americans, from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘model minority’ to the ‘Chinese virus’
No expression of patriotism – not even being front-line workers in a pandemic – makes Asian migrants immune to racism.
The Myth of Asian American Identity
We’re the fastest-growing demographic group in the U.S. But when it comes to the nation’s racial and ethnic divisions, where do we fit in?
The pandemic appears to have sparked a rise in anti-Asian bigotry
One-quarter of Asian-Americans say they have feared for their safety.
What the Delta variant did to South-East Asia
The region had escaped the worst of the pandemic. But in just three months, the virus has brought devastation.
Why Asians in masks should not be the “face” of the coronavirus
Leaning on visual racist tropes to cover the Covid-19 outbreak is dangerous.
‘I am not a virus.’ How this artist is illustrating coronavirus-fueled racism
Sjöblom’s images, shared on her Instagram account, tackle the racism directed at the Asian community since initial cases of novel coronavirus were reported late last year in Wuhan, China.
“They just see that you’re Asian and you are horrible”: How the pandemic is triggering racist attacks
Racial slurs and hateful acts against Asian Americans are on the rise.
COVID’s Outsize Impact on Asian Americans Is Being Ignored
Along with Pacific Islanders, they suffer from disproportionately high death rates and hospitalizations and low testing—but their suffering remains invisible.
AAPI Equity Alliance
AAPI Equity Alliance (formerly, A3PCON) is a coalition of community-based organizations that advocates for the rights and needs of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in Los Angeles County and beyond.

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