Can you pick out which statement(s) below is/are examples of sarcasm?

We have this virus under control.

This coronavirus thing is a hoax.

By April we will have no cases.

We will have tests for anyone who wants one.

We have plenty of masks and ventilators.

My uncle was a professor at MIT so I am very good at science.

Liberate Michigan, Virginia and Minnesota.

Take hydroxychloroquine, what have you got to lose?

Can we inject light and disinfectants into the body?  Seems very interesting to me.

We should inject disinfectants into the brain of a certain leader of the free world to protect him form COVID-19.

It is revealed today that the first death in the U.S. due to COVID-19 was not in late Feb. in Washington state but on Feb. 6 in California.  The person did not travel to China and so had to get it from the community.  This means the virus was present in the U.S. in January for sure.  The patient would have to get it and got sick days later and then died days later.

So this patient was not diagnosed at that time with the virus even though it is well known by that time that this disease was a possible diagnosis.  Yet this was missed.  So how do you blame China for missing the diagnosis in November when nobody in the world knew about this virus?  I have seen many cases during my career of atypical pneumonia.  Many times we see cases of "fever of unknown origin" (FUO).  It took days or weeks to find the real origin of the fever.  Sometimes it turns to be not even an infection that caused the fever but other illnesses such as cancer. 

There are many who accuses China of cover up or slow in reacting to the disease.  But to declare a new infection among us without thorough investigation would be irresponsible.  You can see now that even when every health organization in the world knew about this virus and the genome was already identified, we missed this case in February.  So maybe we know how difficult it is to respond quickly and inform the rest of the world correctly.  We should also realize that our response to the pandemic was slow and inadequate.

There is a TED talk on YouTube featuring Gary Liu, CEO of the South China Morning Post.  The SCMP is the most prominent of the English language papers of Hong Kong.  It has been under attack from all sides since it was bought out by Alibaba.  Western leaning people believe that SCMP has become the puppet of China.  On the other hand, those who are pro China are accusing the paper of being pro western because the top executives are all western educated.

The same accusations are leveled at Gary Liu.  In this TED talk, he gave an excellent timeline regarding COVID-19.  His criticism and praise for China were balance, in my opinion.  Yet when I checked the like and dislike hits, they were almost even.  Most of time, there are way more likes than dislikes on YouTube because the people who tune in to a particular video usually like the content in the first place.  So to me, Liu must be hit from both sides, just like his paper.  To the pro Chinese faction, this U.S. born person who grew up in Taiwan, New Zealand, went to Harvard, worked in the U.S. for 20 years, must be biased against China.  To those against China, working for Alibaba must mean that he will be soft on China.

There were protests in several states regarding lock downs.  Most of the people involved were Trump supporters so Trump has told certain states (with Democratic governors) they should liberate the people.  He even threw in Second Amendment right issues in it.  Once again, Trump is doing his best to divide the country for his own political gain.  If Trump and his supporters have their way, we will end up like Italy or worse.

I think there is an attitude difference between most of the western countries and those of Asia that transcend democracy and communism.  In most of the west, it seems to me individual rights and freedom trump community rights and freedom.  So while South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore are not communist like China, they had the discipline of doing what they perceived as best for the community.  Germany is one big western country that has demonstrated this type of discipline.  But most other western countries were late in lock downs and faced protests over less draconian restrictions than those in Asian countries.

I will end with something from Hong Kong I read:  Quarantine and you have no human right.  No quarantine and you have no human left.  

Recently Andrew Yang in an op-ed said that Asian Americans, in the face of discrimination due to COVID-19, should do more to show that they are good Americans.  While I agree that we should do good things, I don't think we should do so because we are trying to prove our American worthiness.  It would be great in this time of crisis that we step up and do more charity or volunteer work.  But that is true of all Americans, not just Asian Americans. 

No matter what we do, it is not going to convince the racists not to discriminate or attack us.  Asian Americans are already stereotyped as the "model immigrants or minority" but that hasn't stop certain people from considering us not as Americans, but as foreigners.  As Yang himself pointed out, Asians comprise 17% of the physicians in the country.  Many of these doctors along with tens of thousands of healthcare workers of Asian descent are on the front line of defense against this pandemic.  But the racists will still attack us anyway.

During our county Chinese New Year celebration, I was honored to introduce World War II veterans of Chinese descent from our county.  I spoke about the fact that during World War II, over 20,000 men and women of Chinese descent served in our military.  This was 20% of the total population of Chinese in America at that time.  This high percentage of service occurred despite the fact that these heroes faced discrimination before, during and after the war.  These heroes sacrificed despite not being considered by many to be Americans.  They did not have to prove their American worthiness, they just did what was right.  Today, we should do the right things, not because we need to prove our American worthiness, but because they are the right things.

Dr. Ming Lin, an emergency physician was fired by his hospital because he was speaking out in social media about the lack of safety measures for patients and staff during this pandemic.  He had gone to executives of the hospital first and only went public when he saw the response was inadequate.  He is not an isolated case, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians.  It is incredible to me that in this time of crisis, that physicians on the front line, are being dismissed for speaking up.  Isn't it similar  to the reprimand the government in Wuhan gave to Dr. Li when he spoke up? 

I don't think that Dr. Lin's firing is race related.  But there are news of more Asian Americans being attacked as the casualties of the COVID-19 increase.  As the number of deaths increases here in the U.S.  and the conditions in China return to normal, you can bet that attacks on Asian American will increase even more.  Right now, I am sure the attacks are perpetuated by racists or people who have little knowledge of the world.  But that is changing.

Tim Pool, who has a big following on Youtube, ranted about this whole thing was China trying to kill Americans and become number one in the world.  You would not label him as a racist or some babbling idiot.  He came to fame when he covered Occupying Wall Street and used a drone which produced a video showing a cop attacking a protester.  The video contradicted what the cop reported afterward.  Pool became a darling of the left and was a Sanders supporter in 2016.  He has sided with refugees in Europe in the past.  He also has fans on the right since recently he claims that the mainstream media is biased against conservative.

So agree or not agree with him, Pool does not seem to be one who rants without thinking.  But his attack on China is backed by no fact or false narratives.  The idea that China lied about this whole thing to kill Americans and become dominant is nonsense.  As I have pointed out, maybe be the local government in Wuhan made mistakes and delayed things.  But even if a medical genius was running this whole thing from day one, it would not have sped up the warning sent out to the world by more than couple of weeks.  Pool said that the lies from China were intentional so Trump is not responsible for what happens in the U.S.

So China started this outbreak, killing thousands of its own people, so that the virus will spread to the U.S. and kill many more thousands Americans so China can be dominant?  Who in China or anywhere else would think this is great plan?   Even if China lied in the beginning, the U.S. and the rest of the world had 2 months head start on China to fight this virus.  There are countries whose casualty is minimum compare to the U.S.  South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong have done well.  They were affected way earlier than the U.S.  Does Pool think that China believe that the U.S. is less competent than these Asian countries?

I don't know what possesses Pool to rant like this.  But as I mentioned in the last blog, the mainstream media is subtly pointing the finger at China.  Jake Tapper of CNN said this week that Xi Jinping has blood on his hand for China's slow response.  This type of reporting show either a bias agenda or lack of research on how possible infection outbreaks are handled. 

Trump has said that Asian Americans should not be targeted because of this pandemic.  But he didn't just called this "China virus" at his briefings.  He also insisted that the G7 nations use this name instead of COVID-19 in their joint statement after their virtual summit. When the other nations refused, the U.S. didn't sign. Is there any doubt that when things get worse here, Trump will try to shift blame to China?  When that happens, Asian Americans will be in even greater danger.