The War on....COVID?

“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation.”

---

In her book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein has outlined how societies facing a crisis are the perfect conditions for disaster capitalism- a strategy developed by American economist, Milton Friedman, that allows privatized industries to profit from large-scale disasters. Klein contends that while the public is in a state of shock, they are focused on tending to the daily emergencies that ensue the crisis while also placing their trust in those that are in power to steer the course to recovery.

In turn, those in positions of power are provided with the ideal opportunity to push policies that further polarize society and deepen wealth inequalities through exploiting the crises (1,2). A deeper analysis of the strategies utilized in sustaining disaster profiteering reveals that the public discourse surrounding the crises is crucial for its survival, especially, public discourses that exasperate racial discrimination.

Hence, by drawing upon parallels between the war on terror and the fight against COVID, racialized public discourse can be seen as pivotal in sustaining disaster capitalist projects.

At the turn of the 21st century, the American public was met with a disaster- the World Trade Centre was attacked by a series of hijacked planes. The incident claimed the lives of almost 3,000 people and thousands more were injured. As the public was still reeling from the shock, the Bush administration declared the beginning of their war on terror. A war that has been privatized and outsourced in both America and abroad allowing for private industries to profiteer from the ongoing disaster- generating billions through private contracts in the name of defence and security (2).

Pivotal to sustaining the war on terror has been the discourse surrounding it. With terror being an abstract idea, one could shape this faceless enemy in whatever way they pleased (3). As Mervat Hatem has quite aptly noted (4), the Bush administration described the enemy that America was facing as a new form of enemy. An enemy that was not confined by borders but had established an extensive global network. This enemy did not belong to a single nation but rather, consisted of transnational actors with the potential of inflicting harm again on American soil.

The abstract nature of this enemy has allowed for an open battlefield for the war on terror- well, as long as it was Muslim, Arab or even just brown in colour. There were 19 individuals involved in the 9/11 attacks: 15 Saudi Arabians, 2 Emiratis, 1 Lebanese, and 1 Egyptian. Yet, the war continues to take place in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war is also taking place domestically, in the name of homeland security, with detention facilities being filled with Middle Eastern, Arab, and Muslim men (4).

In her article, "It’s not about security, it’s about racism: counter-terror strategies, civilizing processes and the post-race fiction", Tina Patel has outlined how the counter-terror discourse has been instrumental in criminalizing “brown bodies''- a term she uses to describe the socially constructed categorization of a race that is dictated by the socio-political climate. She states that

brown bodies include not only those that may appear to be stereotypically Middle Eastern or of South Asian heritage, but also others, including white converts to Islam (5).

Therefore, this loosely defined categorization has allowed the battlefield for the war on terror to be targeted towards an enemy that can be concocted on an ad hoc basis, whether that be justifying invading a new country or building a new prison facility.

In 2020, a similarity can be seen in the strategy being implemented by disaster capitalists once again.

(6,7)

Pharmaceutical companies have also substantially profiteered from this crisis in a variety of ways.

One such way is the development of vaccine technology. Public funding was allocated to researchers to develop the multiple vaccines we now have available through private pharmaceutical companies. As an article in Scientific America shows (8), millions of dollars in government funds fuelled the research that allowed for the development of the vaccine technology that we now have. Yet, alongside the obvious benefits, it is the pharmaceutical companies that reaping huge financial profits.

The same applies to companies based in the UK. The government has invested over £65 million for the research, development, and manufacturing of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine. Although AstraZeneca has said that they will be selling the vaccine without a profit, they have stated that this is only for the duration of the pandemic after which they have the potential to profit millions from. Thus, demonstrating another example of how private industries have been profiteering from a crisis that has claimed over 2 million lives (9).

Under these circumstances, our current public discourse has been branded as the fight against COVID. This time our abstract enemy is a faceless, mutating virus that can once again be shaped into an enemy on an ad hoc basis and although the pandemic is a global crisis, posing as a threat to all populations, this has not prevented the public discourse surrounding the virus from becoming racialized. The rampant Sinophobia that was witnessed from the onset of the outbreak is evidence of this. Statements such as “China virus,” “Yellow Peril,” “Kung Flu,” “Wuhan Virus” (10) or the following:

“The coronavirus pandemic was the product of an imbalance in man’s relationship with the natural world. It originates from bats or pangolins, from the demented belief that if you grind up the scales of a pangolin you will somehow become more potent or whatever it is people believe”

being used by government officials (11), led to an increase in Sinophobic attacks around the world both online and offline (12). Moreover, the narrative of a higher prevalence in “BAME” communities, another loosely defined racial categorization, has again associated the virus with race. A government official has quite confidently stated that

“certain ethnicities... are more susceptible to coronavirus”(13)

in response to being asked why the UK had one of the highest coronavirus death rates in the entire world. As Adam Almeida has stated, this pseudo-scientific statement has no biological premise (13). There is ample literature to suggest that within the UK, the morbidity rates are higher amongst non-White individuals, but this has no biological basis (13). If this were the case, countries of origin would also have disproportionately higher death rates in comparison to the rest of the world. Hence, as a report published by the Runnymede Trust and the Centre of Dynamics of Ethnicity has shown, the death rate inequalities can be primarily attributed to the "entrenched structural and institutional racism and racial discrimination," that is witnessed in the UK (13).

Thus far, it has been evident that disaster capitalist projects are often surrounded by a racialized public discourse, but the question remains: Why race? Is the shock of an attack on the World Trade Centre or a global pandemic enough to keep the public distracted enough to allow for capitalist policies to be implemented?

Potentially, for a while.

A racialized discourse allows for sustaining the shock by creating fear and hatred through racism as we have seen throughout human history. It is a form of orientalism- a persistent Western tradition that constructs an “exoticized” yet “inferior” representation of the “Orient” while presenting the West as the more civilized superior in comparison. In turn, those belonging to the “Orient” are the antithesis to the West and its values and are seen as a constant threat to its well-being (14). By drawing upon this tradition, the racialized discourse is constructed, inducing fear and hatred amongst the public.

Noam Chomsky has quite aptly stated that:

It is the hatred of the vulnerable that sustains the shock in this case as the public is diverted for an undefined period of time. We have seen this in the war on terror as it has evolved into an endless war, allowing for endless profiteering. In the case of COVID-19, the virus became a racialized disease that can mutate and re-emerge, which the fight against will continue. Therefore, the abstract and vague brown-bodied enemy that can never truly be defeated (because it does not actually exist) is able to crop up anywhere at any time and remains a constant threat.

Contact the author: @MisbahSK_

Disclaimer: the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Identity International.

---

References

1. Klein N. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. 1st edition. London: Penguin; 2008. 576 p.

2. Naomi Klein on Coronavirus and Disaster Capitalism [Internet]. [cited 2021 Apr 3]. Available from: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dmqyk/naomi-klein-interview-on-coronavirus-and-disaster-capitalism-shock-doctrine

3. Newman S, Levine MP. War, Politics and Race: Reflections on Violence in the ‘War on Terror’. Theor J Soc Polit Theory. 2006;(110):23–49.

4. Hatem MF. Discourses on the ‘War on Terrorism’ in the U.S. and its Views of the Arab, Muslim, and Gendered ‘Other’. Arab Stud J. 2003;11/12(2/1):77–97.

5. G. Patel T. It’s not about security, it’s about racism: counter-terror strategies, civilizing processes and the post-race fiction. Palgrave Commun. 2017 May 2;3(1):1–8.

6. Comptroller, Auditor General. Investigation into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic [Internet]. National Audit Office; 2020 Nov. (Session 2019–2021). Report No.: HC 959. Available from: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Investigation-into-government-procurement-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic-Summary.pdf

7. Comptroller, Auditor General. The supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic [Internet]. National Audit Office; 2020 Nov. (Session 2019–2021). Report No.: HC 961. Available from: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Investigation-into-government-procurement-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic-Summary.pdf

8. Arthur Allen, Kaiser Health News. For Billion-Dollar COVID Vaccines, Basic Government-Funded Science Laid the Groundwork. Scientific American [Internet]. Medicine. 2020 Nov 18 [cited 2021 Apr 3]; Available from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/

9. Paul Kelso. COVID-19: The multi-billion pound business of the Oxford vaccine. Sky News [Internet]. 2020 Nov 23 [cited 2021 Apr 3]; Available from: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-the-multi-billion-pound-business-of-the-oxford-vaccine-12134833

10. Horton R. Offline: COVID-19 and the dangers of Sinophobia. The Lancet. 2020 Jul 18;396(10245):154.

11. U.K. Risks China Spat With Boris Johnson Attack on ‘Demented’ Medicine. Bloomberg.com [Internet]. 2021 Jan 11 [cited 2021 Apr 3]; Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/u-k-risks-china-spat-with-johnson-attack-on-demented-medicine

12. Li Y, Nicholson HL. When “model minorities” become “yellow peril”—Othering and the racialization of Asian Americans in the COVID-19 pandemic. Sociol Compass. 2021;15(2):e12849

13. Adam Almeida. The government must not use pseudo-science to dismiss Covid’s impact on BME communities. The Runnymede Trust [Internet]. Race Matters. [cited 2021 Apr 3]; Available from: https://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/the-government-must-not-use-biology-to-dismiss-covids-impact-on-bme-communities

14. Said EW. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan; 1978. 368 p. (Wolfgang Laade Music of Man Archive).

The “Chinese” Virus

“Just because I’m Asian… doesn’t mean I’m the cause of COVID-19….is that what they think when they see me?”

As an Asian living in the UK for nearly eight years, I have never been receptive to “Konnichiwa” or “Ni Hao” when walking on the streets. Yet, as painful as these remarks are made by strangers based on my race, I rarely respond nor even glance at them. Little did I know that my unresponsiveness could have further perpetuated existing stereotypes, exacerbated by something that many of us are taught to do - to be silent.

Over the past year, we have seen key political figures labelling COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus”, the “Chinese Coronavirus”, the “Wuhan Virus”, “Kung flu”, and so on. While Anti-Asian racism is not a new concept, linking COVID-19 to a specific location and race has resulted in an influx of hate crimes towards Asians in the past year. According to the recent “Stop AAPI Hate National” report, there were nearly 3,800 anti-Asian incidents from March 2020 to February 2021 in the US. These stemmed from verbal harassment, physical assault, civil rights violations and online harassment, etc. I, for one, certainly resonate with experiences of verbal and physical abuse.

At the height of the COVID-19 panic last year, bypassers shouted “CORONA!” as I walked by and I got spat on, once, when returning home from the supermarket.

As one who treats England as a home, a looming sense of rejection began to rise in me- despite Britain’s emphasis on it’s progressive diversity and inclusion.

Over the past year, there has been a surge of xenophobic comments and attacks towards those of visible East and South-East Asian (ESEA) descent. In the UK alone, there have been police reports of a 21-75% increase in hate crimes regionally. This statistic is more worrying given that the ESEA population is on the rise in the UK. The Response to the Call for Evidence on Ethnic Disparities and Inequality in the UK report emphasises the difficulty in exploring the details of hate crimes in ESEA populations due to cultural insensitivity in censuses where people choose between being categorised as Chinese, Asian (being homogenous with Central and South Asians) or Other.

In the US, this discrimination has also targeted pacific islanders. Dhanani and Franz found that those who had more trust in Trump, less trust/knowledge in science, and more fear regarding COVID-19 had poorer attitudes towards Asians. Despite the disease being officially named ‘COVID-19’ by WHO, Trump continued to label the disease as the “Chinese virus” in official and unofficial settings, propagating and normalising the racialisation of the illness. Research has found that the use of the term ‘Chinese virus’ is correlated with increasing anti-Asian sentiments. Many news articles were extensively using photos of visibly ESEA people, giving coronavirus a ‘face’ alongside the normalisation of rhetorics such as ‘Kung Flu’ and ‘the Chinese virus’ which further reinforces this problematic narrative. Around 14% of popular tweets related to COVID-19 in 2020 were related to discrimination and within all tweets of 2020, there was a 68.4% increase in negative tweets referencing ESEA populations.

You can read more about this here.

The most grotesque manifestation of this increasingly visible malice towards ESEA populations were the recent Atlanta spa shootings. While 6/8 of the victims of this deadly attack being Asian was horrific enough, the spokesman defending the suspected murderer (who in any other circumstances would’ve been dehumanised as a remorseless terrorist) because he was having a “bad day” added insult to the injury of what had occurred. Like much of the Black Lives Matter manifestation in 2020, this once again highlights the racial privileges of white criminals.

Moreover, while a lot of our attention is on Anti-Asian hate crimes in the US, let’s not forget that this is a global problem.

Although 12% of the Australian population is of Asian descent, nearly one in five Chinese Australians have reported physical or verbal abuse since the beginning of COVID-19.

What we are currently seeing, hearing, and experiencing is just scratching the surface of the actual abuse covered by the media. What about subconscious Anti-Asian bias experienced on a daily basis? According to one study, anti-Asian sentiment is evident in countries with colonial legacies and institutionalised White supremacy. For example, circling back to the US, Republicans have explicitly expressed their fear of Asians carrying and spreading COVID-19 and Democrats are more likely to avoid going to venues including Asian restaurants. This shows that although what we are currently seeing and hearing is fuelled by COVID-19, the Anti-Asian subconscious bias has always been ingrained, to some extent, in US culture. When racism is entangled in one’s unconscious thoughts, values and behaviours, it becomes more challenging to address.

Thinking about the future, while many Asians have experienced some sort of racism in their lives, the vile increase during COVID-19 has pushed us to vocalise our outrage and protest to protect our community, especially in the aftermath of the Atlanta shootings. While we have been continuously silent and silenced in the past, we will no longer accept the injustice experienced by our community. We will no longer accept being the scapegoats of a virus purely on the basis of our race. While traditional media outlets have been useful in disseminating information and resources, it is important to note that social media is becoming a necessary platform to circulate petitions, GoFundMe crowdfunding, webinars etc, where traditional media fails to do so. This allows Asians and those with similar sentiments, no matter their location, to connect in solidarity.

Evidence illustrates conscious and subconscious bias towards Asians interplay with each other, as highlighted by COVID-19- not unlike many other prejudicial attitudes in society. Let us hope that the world and all of us can use the past year as an example of how not to act in a pandemic and to understand what Asians have experienced as a result of this racial scapegoating. We are not all one monolithic group abiding by stereotypes, but each our own individual human with traumas, love, ambitions and fear of illness aside from simply an inherited ethnic identity, to be used against us because scapegoating is easier than being accountable.

---

Contact the author: @lav_cheung

Disclaimer: the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Identity International.

Patients Not Passports

11 million ‘illegal’ people experience prejudicial attitudes and live under discriminatory policies, lacking access to critical health resources (Castañeda et al, 2015). In the UK, heightened immigration enforcement in recent years has led to increased deportations which have in turn decreased the health and wellbeing of many migrants; demonstrating how immigration policy can become synonymous with public health (Zaklaki, 2019). Likewise, in the US this policy in healthcare was found to exacerbate migrant vulnerability, where many doctors are compromising medical ethics by not providing care to patients in dire need (Jimenez AM, 2021).

A lot of these regressive immigration policies increase stress and obstruct access to healthcare. It is important to consider policies that shape the broader health landscapes in which immigrants live and to strive for more deeper understanding of a policy’s impact. This helps us avoid making broad generalisations of all immigrant populations (Castañeda et al, 2015). Internationally, policy making on migration has generally been conducted as separate to the health sector as they often have incompatible goals. Migrant health policy-making tends to focus on human rights and the associated service challenges.

‘Illegal’ (irregular/undocumented) migrants are individuals who enter a country without the required documents/permits, or those who overstay the authorised length of stay in a country

(Zimmerman et al, 2011)

However, poor policy conditions and contradictory policy goals, such as prioritisation of increased foreign labour whilst maintaining restrictive rights for migrants can exacerbate risk conditions related to migration health and pose extra challenges. In the past 50 years, on top of having the most limited access to healthcare, the number of undocumented migrants encountering health risks has also been on the rise (more so than other migrant groups). Migration health insurance schemes are encumbered by restrictive immigration legislation or exclude ‘illegal’ migrants and their families from coverage. Even where multilateral agreements exist, their implementation isn’t universal. (Zimmerman et al. 2011).

The 61st World Health Assembly (WHO 2008), called upon member states to

“promote equitable access to health promotion and care for migrants, to promote bilateral and multilateral cooperation on migrants’ health among countries involved in the whole migration process.”

Furthermore, in 2010 the WHO came up with key elements for it’s migrant health policy and legal framework. The three pillars to this were disease control elements; migration management/control and norms, which looked at wider human rights and international law perspectives (WHO 2010). At an international level, the document didn’t speak about legal/political issues at all. It had a very Eurocentric focus, completely neglecting the wider structural effects of migration policy makes people so vulnerable. It’s also interesting how on their website, WHO denounces any systematic association between migrants and imported communicable diseases (WHO 2018), yet has a whole section on infectious disease control from migrants in the paper.

Disease control is being used an as excuse to control migration and as a scape goat for tighter immigration restrictions. Jelinek et al (2002), found how Europeans travelling back from Malaria-endemic areas in Africa, import just as much malaria as African immigrants yet get none of the backlash. Other criticisms of these global policy processes in migrants’ health rights include that it ignores migrants' political, legal, labour, civil and sociocultural rights; that there’s a need for policy coherency across sectors and that migration policies often fail to achieve their objectives/have hidden or contradictory objectives (Castle 2004). Rogaly (2008), added that all these international processes are fundamentally in neoliberal interests which severely impacts the livelihoods of the world’s poor.

“Depending on the regional impact of immigrants and the amount of travel in the local population, data from national sources in Europe can be heavily skewed toward one or another group”

(Jelinek et al, 2002)

Nationally, the Immigration Act of 2014 changed the definition of a ‘deserving’ citizen in access to the National Health Services (NHS) in the UK. NHS providers can only legally provide healthcare to ‘legal’ migrants who deserve it. Deservingness of immigrant populations has been a relatively neglected area in academia; in fact, there has been a lack of discussion on the role of discrimination (racism/anti-immigrant prejudices) and the importance of understanding migrants' ‘deservingness’ of healthcare (Castañeda et al, 2015; Willen 2012). Migrants in the UK now have to pay surcharges for health care access and are forced into poorer living conditions which can trigger latent tuberculosis. While, undocumented migrants are now denied care. On the other hand, Spain has one of the most liberal immigration policies in the EU. After realising the economic value of migrants, Spain started to recruit legal workers from Sub Saharan African countries. At the same time, it attempted to forge agreements with various African countries for increased repatriation in exchange for greater economic and financial support. In terms of illegality, Spain has a strict expulsion policy with no legalisation for undocumented immigrants possible, many of them are kept within detention centres at the Ceuta and Melilla borders for years. (Choe, 2007; Andersson, 2014).

More needs to be done to support migrant’s health rather than increasing their morbidity. Increased outreach and community mobilisation programmes as well as health promotion addressing fear of diagnosis and the success of treatment are key to increasing HIV testing among migrants. Additional to this, is the prioritisation of the health access rights of ‘illegal’ migrants once diagnosed or who are at risk of infection. Also, more investment is needed to expand the presence of HIV testing facilities beyond just sexual health clinics, but to all health clinics to decrease testing deterrence (Fakoya et al, 2008). The European Academic Science Advisory Council (EASAC, 2007), highlighted the importance of global coordination; member states should not only work on assisting healthcare finances for migrants but should also prioritise tackling infectious diseases in the first place, to reduce the global burden of disease and risk of transmission into the country.

In light of recent events, many "illegal" migrants have died from COVID-19 due to delayed health-seeking behaviours. These delays occurring as a result from fears of deportation. The UK government is now making an open call for undocumented migrants to register with local GPs to get the COVID vaccination (BBC, 2021) which is important in efforts to end this pandemic. However, I hope this is a lesson that immigrant health is public health rather than a reason to push more aggressive conditions towards undocumented migrants.

The undocumented migrants' health is absent in global debates- where they aren’t recognised in most European health systems and where they aren’t seen as ‘deserving’ of healthcare when they are recognised. Furthermore, personifying infectious diseases to geographical locations and its people has deeply problematised health care access for the people who need it the most. Those involved in clandestine migration need to be heard and accepted; not criminalised and these issues have not even begun to be mentioned in global health debates.

Contact the author: @ludic.n

Disclaimer: the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Identity International.

---

Andersson, R., 2014. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe 1st ed., Oakland: University of California Press.

BBC., 2020. 'Covid: 'No deportation risk' for illegal migrants getting the vaccination.' 8th February 2021. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55978334.

Castañeda, H. et al., 2015. Immigration as a Social Determinant of Health. Annual Review of Public Health, 36(1), pp.375–392. Available at: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182419

Castle, S., 2004. Rural children’s attitudes to people with HIV/AIDS in Mali: The causes of stigma. Culture, Health and Sexuality, 6(1), pp.1–18.

Choe, J., 2007. African Migration to Europe. Council on Foreign Relations, p.1. Available at: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/african-migration-europe

EASAC, 2007. Impact of migration on infectious diseases in Europe. , 44, pp.1–8. Available at: https://www.easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Migration.pdf

Fakoya, I. et al., 2008. Barriers to HIV testing for migrant black Africans in Western Europe. HIV Medicine, 9(SUPPL. 2), pp.23–25. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-1293.2008.00587.x

Jelinek, T. et al., 2002. Imported Falciparum Malaria in Europe: Sentinel Surveillance Data from the European Network on Surveillance of Imported Infectious Diseases ularity of international air travel to tropical destinations has brought a steady increase in the number of importe. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 34, pp.572–6. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article-abstract/34/5/572/316915

Jimenez AM. The legal violence of care: Navigating the US health care system while undocumented and illegible. Soc Sci Med. 2021 Feb;270:113676. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113676. Epub 2021 Jan 2. PMID: 33434720.

Rogaly, B., 2008. Migrant workers in the ILO’s Global Alliance Against Forced Labour report: A critical appraisal. Third World Quarterly, 29(7), pp.1431–1447.

WHO, 2010. Health of Migrants: The Way Forward, Available at: https://qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1004898/mod_book/chapter/64866/WHO2015.pdf

WHO, 2018. Migration and health: key issues. World Health Organisation, p.1. Available at: http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-determinants/migration-and-health/migrant-health-in-the-european-region/migration-and-health-key-issues#292117

WHO, 2008. Resolution of Sixty-First World Health Assembly. WHO, Geneva, (May), pp.23–25. Available at: http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA61-REC1/A61_REC1-en.pdf

Willen, S.S., 2012. How is health-related “ deservingness” reckoned? Perspectives from unauthorized im/migrants in Tel Aviv. Social Science and Medicine, 74(6), pp.812–821.

Zaklaki RD. Access to health care for illegal migrants: ethical implications of a new health policy in the UK. Br J Gen Pract. 2019 Feb;69(679):56-57. doi: 10.3399/bjgp19X700841. PMID: 30704992; PMCID: PMC6355273.

Zimmerman, C., Kiss, L. & Hossain, M., 2011. Migration and Health: A Framework for 21st Century Policy-Making. PLoS Medicine, 8(5).