The coronavirus pandemic in Japan has brought not just an epidemic of diseases, but too an attack of bullying and discrimination against the sick, their families, and health workers. A government campaign to raise awareness appears to be making a difference, at least for medical workers.

But it’s made as it was restricted progress in countering the harassment and disregarding which will be discouraging individuals from looking for testing and care and ruining the fight against the widespread.

Separated from fear of infection, experts say the bias against those indeed indirectly related to the illness moreover stems from deeply established thoughts about purity and cleanliness in a culture that rejects anything regarded to be outsider, unclean or troublesome. Medical workers risking their lives to care for patients are a primary target, but individuals working at grocery stores, conveying parcels, and carrying out other basic jobs moreover are facing harassment. So are their family members.

One nurse was approached by some women and asked to leave a Tokyo park she was going by with her children. A few nurses are unwelcome at restaurants they usually eat at. A few are rejected by taxi drivers. The Health Service issued a directive to daycare offices after a few barred the children of doctors and nurses. 

Ingenious nurses within the northern island of Hokkaido said the mother of one of her coworkers was suspended from work. The husband of another was told at a work meeting he wouldn’t be hired because of his wife’s job. The nurses, both allowed to COVID-19 patients, were staying at hotels to protect their families whereas working beneath extreme conditions without adequate protective hardware and testing.

Random acts of hatred have been reported from across the country:

— Arson threats were made against Kyoto Sangyo University after some of its students were infected.

— An Osaka city assemblyman compared a young patient to “a murderer” of elderly people.

— In Mie, central Japan, people threw stones at a patient’s house and vandalized property.

— In Iwate, a man died while in self-quarantine after his future neighbors sought to bar him from moving into a retirement home and the local government office refused to register him.

Source: AP