When I heard the news that a new, highly contagious, and potentially deadly virus had appeared in Wuhan, China, I figured that it would spread rapidly throughout the interconnected world we live in. So when the World Health Organization finally declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, it did not surprise me. Nor was I surprised by the unfortunate toll the virus took in so many countries. As a native Texan of Sino-Persian descent, what did surprise me, however, was how the virus also caused a global outbreak of racism.

In the United States, political leaders soon started referring to the pandemic’s causative agent as the China Virus, and anti-Asian sentiments quickly surged. From people shunning restaurants in San Francisco’s Chinatown to elderly Asians beaten on the streets, from Asian women stabbed in plain sight at a bus stop to Asian Americans repeatedly subjected to harassment and racial slurs, the outbreak of racism was as swift as it was shocking.

Indeed, anti-Asian bigotry spread worldwide faster than the virus itself. In Italy, the governor of Veneto downplayed the risk of the virus in Italy because Italians have “culturally strong attention to hygiene, washing hands, [and] taking showers, whereas we have all seen the Chinese eating mice alive.” In France, newspapers ran headlines such as "Alerte jaune (Yellow alert)” and "Le péril jaune (Yellow peril).”

The outbreak of racism was surely not confined to the West. My Taiwanese-American friend was subjected to verbal abuse in Zanzibar, accused of being from Wuhan. In China, in the meanwhile, the virus was touted as a particularly African problem, with Africans residing in Guangzhou forced to undergo unnecessary testing and quarantine. Many were evicted by landlords; denied a hotel stay, some were forced to sleep on the streets. Food insecurity set in as shops and restaurants refused service to African customers.

In neighboring India, politicians from the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party added fuel to the fire of simmering Islamophobia by claiming that Muslims were acting as human biological weapons, deliberately spreading the virus. Muslims were soon subjected to mob beatings, harassment, and discrimination by the Hindu majority. In the meanwhile, the BJP allowed the Hindu Kumbh Mela pilgrimage to go on as planned, causing the world’s largest super spreader event, leading to the needless death of tens of thousands in India and the rapid global spread of the “Indian variant” of the virus.

Perhaps this type of reaction is not completely surprising. It is easier to blame others for a contagious disease than it is to enact sensible policies to contain its spread. Nor is this without historical precedence. The French called syphilis the Italian disease, other Europeans called it the French disease, and Arabs called it the Christian disease. But at the end, it is syphilis, caused by Treponema pallidum, not by being Italian, French, or Christian. During the bubonic plague, European Jews were blamed for deliberately spreading the disease, and were tortured, lynched, and ethnically cleansed. Even in the twentieth century, it was easier to call the 1918 influenza outbreak the Spanish Flu than it was to accept that the virus originated in Kansas, part of the American heartland.

It is apparent that racism is a chronic disease that plagues human societies, barely lurking beneath a thin façade, and ready to pop its face with any instigation, be it a terrorist attack, a refugee crisis, or a public health emergency. Yet, as harrowing as the rapid spread of misinformation is, perhaps there is a silver lining in all this. The global media has been quick to point out the racist rhetoric used by politicians, to report on instances of racial violence, and to combat misinformation. One can only hope that speaking truth to the voices of hate will slowly leave our societies less prone to future epidemics of racism.