The racist assumption that
if you look Chinese, if you look Asian,
you might be a virus carrier.
- Because this is a virus
that's coming out of a city in China,
because it's a virus that’s from a foreign land,
they automatically group all Chinese people as this monolith,
that we all are to blame,
that we all need to be avoided,
that we all need to be quarantined.
So my mom is a nurse at a Toronto hospital.
One day a patient had come up to her
and asked for a mask.
And my mom being a nurse, she has to ask the patient,
“Oh, why do you need a mask? Are you coughing?
Are you sneezing? What seems to be the problem?”
And the patient replied to her, “No, none of those things.”
So we’re in Scarborough.
Scarborough is actually one of the most diverse areas in Toronto.
A lot of immigrant communities
in this specific riding.
This mall is one of the big hubs in this specific area.
Usually, the food court is a congregation spot.
But as we can see from the number of empty seats there are,
it seems that there is some impact, right?
The first day the virus broke,
there was barely anyone around.
Normally, you might see the whole room is packed, right?
As we can see it's kind of like maybe a little more than half, right?
We are seeing a bit of a rebound, which is great.
So this is Pacific mall,
one of the biggest Chinese malls outside of Asia.
Pacific Mall relies also on a lot of non-Chinese customers.
Perhaps consumers from other communities
are sort of seeing Pacific mall as, you know,
dangerous.
Hopefully, as people become less concerned about coronavirus,
more and more people will start coming back to the mall.
The reactions I’ve seen to the coronavirus in 2020
are very similar to the reactions that I saw as a child
with SARS in 2003.
During the SARS outbreak,
my family owned a small business in London, Ontario.
What we saw was a complete decline in that business.
And you have to remember
that immigrants tend to work in food.
They tend to work in service
because they couldn't get any other jobs.
When you have something like that happen,
you choke off their only line of income.
And when you see something happening, shut it down.
Be a good ally.
What will protect you from the virus
is taking the precautions that experts tell you to take.