Chu 朱 on Nostr: My husband is having a hindsight is 20/20 moment and said "we should have known ...

My husband is having a hindsight is 20/20 moment and said "we should have known better and masked up sooner. We saw Wuhan. We should have loaded up on stuff and have been better prepared"

If you're having one of these moments, I want you to know as someone writing a dissertation on this period, this is wishful thinking and it's not your fault.

At the time, authorities were actively discouraging mask use. Our media did everything it could to "other" Wuhan, Iran. It wasn't until it hit a white place, Italy, that they had an "oh crap" moment and started reporting like a virus might not give a crap what ethnicity you are.

Many older people in the Chinese Canadian community masked up fast and started social distancing before it was a thing. Then accusations of racism, over reaction started. These were people who lived through SARS and their collective memory got ignored and mocked.

I also put my trust in authorities and didn't mask until the advice changed, which took until APRIL!

We can argue that the science changed. Fine. But we knew this was a SARs type virus and somehow, magically, authorities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and the rest of Asia knew enough about the precautionary principle to tell people to mask up.

Instead of taking that advice, we used the images of masked Asian in a racist move to other them further, making Asians uncomfortable to mask and take precautions.

I am not an epidemiologist. I trusted the experts who, largely due to political pressures downplayed the risks.

We can't talk about conspiracy theorists in a vacuum outside of the the reality that people did lie. People did have vested interests they put first. Nobody is an expert in everything. I have trust that people are acting in my best interests when they are in positions of power. (Ha. I know, right?)

I know authorities were between a rock and a hard place but a lot of trust was lost. And we have to recognize the role this plays in proliferation of distrust and even more conspiracy theories.

Trust is the issue here. The Chinese Canadian community was pissed at Dr. tam. One of our own because they saw her as someone who is one of us, who should have known better and who should have been doing what her HK counterparts were doing -telling people to mask. In my interviews, there were many harsh words spoken about her.

Trust is easier to lose than to gain. Many of us put trust in the wrong place at the time. It had to do with racism, with othering, with protecting the economy. We didn't mask because they told us not to - despite the calls for masks being well underway in other places.

Will we be more prepared the next time around? Not unless they can convince people that they can be trusted again.