Dispatches from Quarantine:
Young People on Covid-19

Starting today, I’ve decided to embark on a stream-of-conscious, Proust-esque, diary-esque literary journey. Partly to overcome my writer’s block -- which my English major friend solemnly swears is a figment of my imagination and is an excuse for literature’s lovers to not write but fume and read – maybe she’s right, but I begin this journey mostly because my mother told me that if I begin to write down my random thoughts, it may help me have a physical piece to reflect on as I seem to be unable to finish any of the personal statement drafts for my Common Application I have begun to write. 

As an Asian-American teenage girl in quarantine a little over six months left until Early Decision deadlines, college has become my personality trait. By habit, I glance up at my ticking clock, if you can even call it a clock, it’s more of a flashing number on the top right corner of my laptop. It flashes 5:56:07 as I type(d) this (I am not quite sure if I should say type or typed as it was 5:56:07 but now it is 5:57:39 and time continues to flee). It’s an interesting concept, this time. A concept made just the more mischievous by quarantine. Not only is time the one thing the quarantined world seems to be unable to measure -- my mother and I hold random bets on who can guess the date; neither of us is ever correct -- but the only thing we care about. This virus feels more like a when then a what. What is COVID-19? Even the man sitting in our Oval Office seems to not define it. (A list of words The Donald has used to refer to the pandemic: flu, China Flu, China Virus, Wuhan Virus, disease, Tide Pod Challenge.) Time in itself has become a juxtaposition. Time is of the essence, they said. But is that still the case? It’s been over three months since the first reported case in the States and who knows when exactly COVID-19 first spread in Wuhan. That's the issue, nobody really knows, huh? Nobody seems to know what is going on, let alone the date. The date. Today is April 28, 2020. Four two eight two oh.

I talked to my friends today. We made jokes about how quarantine feels like being on an airplane. We’re watching movies we’ve already seen at 2 p.m. while eating pretzels, and our heads HURT. Someone makes a Chinese joke. My best friend asks if my mom is cooking a bat for dinner. Ha, ha, didn’t laugh. It’s just a joke. But it IS from China. But, Irin, you’re not Chinese. I believe that everyone is more than entitled to their own opinions and values. But as purely ignorant opinions are fueled by those in power, common courtesy and societal consciousness seem to have left the chat.

Every day I scour the news to find tabloids on COVID-19; specifically, the ones where Asian and Asian-American persons are attacked by people of different ethnicities. Every day I am dismayed by what I find, disappointed in my country, and infuriated that such attacks are not reprimanded by the public. In fact, the man sitting in our Oval Office himself has encouraged such behavior; whether he may process that or not is yet another entirely different conversation. We should have that conversation.

I have been fortunate enough to not have witnessed any misdemeanor towards Asians, but my mother has been a victim of attack. When we first heard of the outbreak in Wuhan, my family was convinced that it would not be long before the epidemic became a pandemic. We asked our family in Korea to send us quality protective masks and brought home medical gloves from my father’s practice so that we would be prepared at a minute's notice. Our efforts paid off. We were prepared, but the backlash received for being prepared was uncalled for.

One day a few weeks ago, a white, female nurse pushed my mother at our local Baron’s and yelled at my mother about her mask: Where did you get it? Why do you have one? I am a NURSE and I don’t even have one of those?!?! She shrieked and clawed while employees defended my mother. Was her lack of preparedness our fault for being Asian-American? Did assaulting my mother somehow fix her apparent lack? Or rather was it her own foolishness and the pitiful state of the American healthcare system that resulted in her inadequate safety precautions?

We were lucky enough that she was not armed and my mother did not meet a more deadly fate as many others have, but the xenophobia is backed by statical evidence, not just anecdotes.  43.4% of U.S. COVID-19 cases, the highest percentage of COVID cases for a racial demographic, are white. Asians constitute a mere 4% of this population. You can do the math. 

So, reader: It all comes down to this: What are YOU going to do? Will you stand up for your neighbors? Or will you be a perpetrator? Or even worse, will you be a bystander?

Our ancestors came here in search of something more. Every single one of our ancestors, whether that be the Wooly Mammoth or religious freedom or safety. Now, here we are... in the land of the free and the home of the brave. If we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, why are such a large number of citizens chained to xenophobia and courageous only because of cowardliness?