The format of a My Take is 150 words – no more, no less – to express an opinion on a different topic each week. This week the topic was variants and their names.
As a minority group, the Asian population has always faced discrimination, but with officials pointing fingers towards China as the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak a movement of violence and prejudicial and discriminatory acts against Asian people emerged. Now we are facing the arrival of the Covid variants and it was decided to use the country’s name where the variant was first detected to differentiate them, like the Brazil variant. Putting a country’s name to a virus that has led to a collapse in world affairs is like giving your child the worst name imaginable; they will be teased, bullied, mocked, and they will be looked at and treated differently. In this case, we can see how a name can lead to social and political turmoil. It is definitely not the time to perpetuate further division and fear on such a massive and global scale.
