Sometimes I think about how back in early January, people who had basic deductive skills and decided to avoid places with commonly frequented by Chinese people (statistically more likely to have an unknown carrier at the time) were vilified as racist by the “Hug a Chinese” crowd.

I’ve often talked about how Americans culture is full of public performative virtue signaling and how uncomfortable it makes me because Americans often encourage others to abandon basic common sense and self preservation in order to perform adherence to an accepted virtue.

In this particular case the virtue in question was to prove you weren’t racist, and not only did it use reverse psychology to encourage others to have more deliberate interactions with Chinese people but politicians and public figures grandstanded and made shows of going doing so

But the crucial part is, this was all being done at a time when people from the rest of China were actively ostracizing people from Hubei and particularly Wuhan

And if at that time, everyone else had immediately ostracized people from China (Eg through bans) we would not be here

Everyone knows the popular phrase “Avoid like plague”.

We have forgotten that many of the sayings we use in daily speech are short summaries of wisdom from past bitter experiences.

Many, MANY people delayed avoiding Chinese people though China had a plague until it was too late

The age old human response to disease has always been avoidance.

And it is the RIGHT response.

If in early January every single country in the world had sealed its border to China, and on an individual level, people had strongly avoided anyone with a connection to China, well..

The disease would have burned itself out, and once over we could have met happily with our Chinese friends again

The rest of the world would have been in a stronger position to help China with medical supplies

But people went against the most basic instinct to appear not racist

Italy one of the worst hit countries was busy doing nonsense entertaining the selfish “I am not a virus, hug a Chinese person” campaigns of woker than thou Asians.

Over 10,000 people are dead in Italy from Wuhan virus today.

You can’t prove to everyone you’re not racist if dead

We should not forget that Asian Americans especially and black people are strongly culpable in the spread.

Both groups strongly resisted any attempt to close borders, restrict travel, or even just personally avoid Chinese people in January by mass online accusations of racism.

Asian Americans did it for obvious selfish reasons while Black Americans did it because the racism hammer they cling to makes every possible issue no matter how logical look like a nail

So they lent their voice to Asians in January to pressure everyone into such obvious danger

Yes it is good to not be racist.
Yes we should try not to stereotype people but stereotypes are not by default bad.

Human beings survive by pattern recognition and early warning mental alarm systems of which aversion to disease is the strongest one.

Life before virtue signaling

The moral of this story is that social pressure can strongly nullify common sense.

And by the time you realise you were pressured into making the wrong choice, the damage has been done and it’s too late.