Answer:
Reasons to Stop Racism and Why
Explanation:
Racism is intrinsically wrong. It contradicts our values as public health practitioners to promote the health of all with the goal of achieving health equity. Racist hate crimes can lead to fear, injury, and death. Even more subtle instances of unfair treatment, such as seemingly minor microaggressions, can contribute to allostatic load and health problems such as heart disease, substance abuse, and suicide among Asian Americans. Discrimination can result in infected persons not being treated properly. Fearing discrimination, infected persons may delay treatment until it is too late. Discriminatory policies and systems that have resulted in the lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate services will likely prolong the COVID-19 outbreak. Discrimination can skew our understanding of the disease by affecting the case fatality rate, which is calculated by dividing the number of COVID-19 deaths by the number of diagnosed cases. For example, if people who experience discrimination opt to hide and not get tested, this could result in an undercount of the denominator and contribute to an overestimate of the case fatality rate. Anti-Chinese racism has spillover effects to other communities. Most obviously, members of other Asian subgroups (e.g., Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese) become targets of anti-Chinese discrimination. And racism begets racism, as seen in these racist and anti-Semitic quotations from social media. Racism makes a bad situation worse. Scapegoating deflects attention from the underlying fact that our public health infrastructure is underdeveloped. Moreover, the use of phrases such as “Chinese virus” directly contradicts calls from the WHO, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other scientific agencies to use scientific nomenclature and avoid stigmatizing language. The public receives mixed messages that fuel confusion and panic. Instead, we should be sending consistent messages to help promote facts, encourage salutogenic behaviors, and calm fears. Racism and nativism could prevent us from learning from the experiences of China and other countries about community mitigation and preparedness. This unnecessarily prolongs the outbreak and amplifies our losses.
