Samantha Bee walks us through the ugly history of anti-Asian racism in the US.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Trump spurred on this racism with his repeated blaming of China for the pandemic and use of terms like the ‘China virus’, the ‘Wuhan virus’ and the puerile ‘kung flu’, inflaming his supporters into thinking that all Asians were somehow culpable in creating the pandemic.
The current dominant strain of the virus in the US is the B.1.1.7 variant which originated in the UK. If Trump were still president, would he be calling it the ‘British variant”? I doubt it.
The NBC news tonight had a segment on a Japanese-American woman — an Olympic athlete in karate — who was confronted by some MAGA-type doughhead in a park. The jerk ranted at her about going back where she came from and the other typical bigoted crap, getting pretty aggressive in the process. A lot of it was caught on cellphone video.
I was almost hoping he would actually try to attack her physically — he might have been in for quite a surprise.
Well, technically the B.1.1.7 variant was only first identified in the UK. It is impossible to tell whether it originated here or came from somewhere else first, via travellers from places with a less developed DNA sequencing infrastructure. For some historical reason we do a lot more sequencing work on our covid samples than most places, and so variants show up here more readily.
Given that it was first identified in Kent (we call it the “Kent variant” over here), a sea-borne vector is quite likely.
Trump grounded flights to China first, because he had a trade war going on. Even then it was alrready known that the virus was running wild in the USA, and it had entered from Europe. When Trump grounded also European flights (too late), he still allowed flights to/from UK and Ireland, because he had hotels there.
It should be alled the Trump virus.
@DonDueed #1:
Olympic karate is quite useless in self defense. It is fake in the sense that hurting the opponent is forbidden. Contact karate became an Olympic sport only after the Koreans added protective padding and renamed it taekwondo.
If Trump were literate enough to have read comic books when he was a kid, then he would have called the British variant the “Clark Kent” Superbug.
It’s sad to realize how much influence Cheetolini had when one considers that he alone was the main force in reviving anti-Asian bigotry.
“Olympic karate is quite useless in self defense”
It’s useless in MMA for sure, and far from the best martial art for self defence (kickboxing and BJJ are generally agreed to be the ones you want for that). But against a ranting, untrained, unprepared moron on the street? My money’s on the karateka, every time. Apart from anything else, footwork alone makes it unlikely someone without fighting training could even land a hit.