The Overwhelming Racism Of COVID Coverage

Western media cannot write western failure

indi.ca
5 min readSep 10, 2020
The NYTimes published a bunch of photos of Thailand doing things right and titled it No One Knows What Thailand Is Doing Right. Because racism.

Thailand worked hard and fought back COVID-19 with public health. Instead of seeing that, however, the NYTimes asked if it was something in their blood. We’re talking about oriental blood magic, in 2020. I’m serious:

Is there a genetic component in which the immune systems of Thais and others in the Mekong River region are more resistant to the coronavirus? Or is it some alchemy of all these factors that has insulated this country of 70 million people? (NYT)

This is literal racism. Instead of looking what Thai people did, they’re asking if it’s something in their veins. Because Thai people couldn’t possibly just be competent, it must be alchemy. This sort of coverage is awful, and it’s endemic. Recently the NYPost (dumpster fire) said: Scientists can’t explain puzzling lack of coronavirus outbreaks in Africa. Well no, they can, it’s bog standard public health. They have excellent scientists in Africa, you know, if you would ever let them get a visa for conferences.

This is just racism, and western coverage is almost all like this. They attribute agency to rich/white nations like Germany or New Zealand but luck to anyone poorer or dark. And it’s just not true. Poorer nations have done better than the rich because they had…

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indi.ca

Indrajit (Indi) Samarajiva is a Sri Lankan writer. Follow me at www.indi.ca, or just email me at indi@indi.ca.