BERKELEY WARNS STUDENTS HOW CORONAVIRUS MEMES SPREAD XENOPHOBIA

Berkeley Warns Students How Coronavirus Memes Spread Xenophobia

Leftists blaming pandemic fears on bigotry, racism

Kyle Hooten | Campus Reform – FEBRUARY 19, 2020

Fear of the coronavirus stems from “xenophobia and racism in America,” according to faculty at the University of California-Berkeley.

“Biased American public health and immigration policies” are to blame for Americans’ “anxiety over the potentially deadly disease,” says a recent Berkeley News article.

The piece, titled “Coronavirus: Fear of Asians rooted in long American history of prejudicial policies,” draws on the opinions of two UC Berkeley educators to make this claim.

Professor John A. Powell, director of Berkeley’s “Othering and Belonging Institute” is quoted saying that Coronavirus woes stem partly from “an assumption that the West, particularly Anglo-American Christians, should dominate the world,” and partly from a “heightened state of [anti-immigrant] bias.”

He adds that debates about Chinese expansionism, Chinese 5G networks, and Chinese espionage can also reveal racist American tendencies.

Powell concludes that a global society is the only path forward in a new world characterized by growing Chinese hegemony.

Berkeley research scientist and lecturer Winston Tseng agrees with Powell.

“There’s a part of that original history of xenophobia and racism in America from the 19th and 20th centuries that is coming back,” he told Berkeley News.

“[The Coronavirus] is a very serious issue, for sure, but from a public health standpoint it’s a relative issue compared to all the public health issues globally,” he said, after stating his belief that the virus will peak with only 200,000 cases.

The Berkeley News article also claims that “social media memes and GIFs” about the coronavirus are complicit in the spread of virus-related xenophobia.

Campus Reform previously reported on a similar statement about the virus made by Berkeley that was ultimately retracted by the school alongside a public apology. The statement came in the form of a now-deleted Instagram post from an official Berkeley account which claimed that “xenophobia” is among the “normal reactions” to the virus.

The school’s executive director of communications and media relations, Roqua Montez IV, acknowledged the social media retraction and apologized for its content.

Campus Reform reached out to Montez for further comment but did not hear back in time for publication.

Coronavirus Pandemic: The Next Two Weeks Are Critical

2/19/2020

Indonesia claims “zero” cases. That’s a ridiculous claim because it’s already been established that Indonesia had significant traffic from Wuhan, China before the travel restrictions from Wuhan were in effect. This means only 1 thing. Indonesia is very likely already in the middle of a Coronavirus outbreak, worse than Japan, because the Indonesian government is pretending like this doesn’t even exist and they’re doing absolutely nothing to detect it.

Russia temporarily bans ALL Chinese visitors amid coronavirus epidemic

CAP

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree on Tuesday evening prohibiting Chinese citizens from entering Russia for tourism, work and for private purposes. The new rules are effective from Thursday.

The decision is the strongest measure yet taken to prevent the entry and spread of the new coronavirus in Russia. Previously, Russian Railways suspended all passenger traffic to and from China, and flights have been heavily restricted. In addition, border crossings in the Far East have been closed.

“From 00:00 local time on February 20, 2020, the passage of citizens of the People’s Republic of China across the state border of the Russian Federation entering the territory of the Russian Federation for labor purposes, for private, educational and tourist purposes, is temporarily suspended,” read a statement issued by the government’s operational headquarters headed by Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova.

Russian man diagnosed with coronavirus on board cruise ship in Japan

CAP

Additionally, from Wednesday Russia will temporarily stop issuing entry invitations to Chinese citizens for private and educational purposes.

There are currently no reported live cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus in Russia. Two infected Chinese citizens who were quarantined in the Tyumen and Transbaikalia regions have recovered and were discharged from hospital.

One Russian man has, however, been hospitalized in Japan after becoming ill on board the cruise ship Diamond Princess, which was docked and locked down because of a virus-spreading passenger.

He and his spouse have been transferred to medical facilities, with Japanese authorities clarifying on Tuesday that only the man is currently known to be infected.

Over 1,800 people have so far died from COVID-19, with more than 72,000 infections recorded. The vast majority in China. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the epidemic a global health emergency.

 

HEAD OF WUHAN HOSPITAL DIES OF CORONAVIRUS

Head of Wuhan Hospital Dies of Coronavirus

Global death toll rises to nearly 1,900

2/18/2020

The director of a hospital at the epicenter of China’s coronavirus outbreak has died, according to state media, marking the latest death as Beijing scrambles to contain the virus.

Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died on Tuesday morning after “all-out rescue efforts failed,” state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Liu’s death was initially announced on Monday night in a social media post by the Hubei Health Commission. However, in a follow-up message the commission said that the hospital director was alive and battling the virus.

At least six other medical workers in China have died from the virus, while an additional 1,716 have been infected, AFP reported, citing official figures.

The death toll from coronavirus has reached 1,873, with nearly half of China’s population subject to quarantines or other restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of the virus.

According to the latest figures, there are 73,325 confirmed cases of the virus worldwide – the vast majority in mainland China.

 

WHO Holds Secret Talks With Tech Giants To Stop Spread of Coronavirus “Misinformation”

See the source image

Despite the fact that some things labeled “misinformation” turned out to be true.

Published  on 17 February, 2020

The World Health Organization has held talks with tech giants to stop the spread of coronavirus “misinformation,” despite the fact that some things once labeled “misinformation” have since turned out to be true.

The meeting was organized by the WHO but hosted by Facebook at its Menlo Park campus in California. Attendees included representatives from Amazon, Twilio, Dropbox, Google, Verizon, Salesforce, Twitter, YouTube, Airbnb, Kinsa and Mapbox.

According to the WHO’s Andy Pattison, an “infodemic” of misinformation has accompanied the coronavirus outbreak and big tech giants need to respond by censoring “fake news” content.

Both Facebook and Twitter already announced that they would remove content deemed to be misinformation regarding the virus, a dangerous new lurch to mass censorship given that what is considered “misinformation” is totally subjective and beholden to partisan bias.

Two clear examples of “misinformation” surrounding the coronavirus subsequently turned out to be true.

CAP

See the source image

The first example was claims that China was hiding the true number of coronavirus victims, once labeled a “conspiracy theory” by the media but subsequently proven accurate on Friday when 14,800 new coronavirus cases were reported in a single day.

The second example was suspicions that the virus could have emerged from a bio-safety level 4 research lab in Wuhan.

This contention has been aggressively attacked by the media and big tech giants – Zero Hedge was even banned by Twitter for reporting it – but a new study by scientists at the prestigious South China University of Technology in Guangzhou has confirmed that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Chinese dissidents and others have been defamed and in some cases imprisoned by authorities, but the media continues to treat any questioning of the official Chinese Communist Party narrative with disdain.

Senator Cotton: China Refusing to Hand Over Evidence About Wuhan BioLab

New report says lab was likely source of coronavirus outbreak.

Published  on 

Senator Tom Cotton says that China is refusing to hand over evidence concerning the bio-safety level 4 research lab in Wuhan despite a new report from biological scientists at the South China University of Technology saying it may have been the source of the coronavirus outbreak.

During an appearance on Fox News, Cotton told Maria Bartiromo that new evidence confirmed the source of the virus was not the meat market in Wuhan.

“Here is what we do know. This virus did not originate in the Wuhan animal market,” said Cotton. “Epidemiologists who are widely respected from China published a study in the international journal Lancet have demonstrated that several of the original cases did NOT have any contact with that food market. The virus went into that food market before it came out of that food market. So we don’t know where it originated… We also know that only a few miles away from that market is China’s only bio-safety Level Four Super Laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.”

Cotton said that China’s “duplicity and dishonesty” meant that questions needed to be asked about the lab but that “China right now is not giving any evidence on that question at all” and Beijing was being “very secretive” on what happens at the lab.

Cotton also accused China of consistently blocking American scientists from traveling to Wuhan to assist in discovering the origins of the virus.

A new report by scientists at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China concludes that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

One of the laboratories named in the report which was conducting research on bat coronavirus was located just 280 meters from the site of the Wuhan meat market.

For weeks, the media has demonized anyone who suggested the lab could have been responsible for the coronavirus outbreak as a dangerous conspiracy theorist peddling fake news.

However, now that CNN/NY Times journalist Ezra Cheung tweeted precisely that yesterday, one wonders whether they will begin to change their tune.

CAP

More Americans infected with coronavirus

2/17/2020

The second of two flights carrying Americans home from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, quarantined in Japan, has landed in Texas. There were 380 Americans on board the ship, where dozens of passengers tested positive for the coronavirus.

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