by 5nordehacedod
Los Angeles held their Festival on February 1st. This was ONE WEEK right after China held their festivals, including Wuhan. People left China. Some may have even directly participated in Wuhan’s festivities and then went directly to L.A. the next week.
San Francisco held their festival February 8th and February 9th. Two weeks after Wuhan.
San Francisco leadership even vouched themselves that there was no threat.
Norman Yee, president of the city’s Board of Supervisors, said he grew up attending the city’s annual Lunar New Year celebration and encouraged people not to be deterred by “unfounded” fear surrounding the coronavirus. More people are catching the flu, he said.
Yee condemned incidents of racism and xenophobia sparked by fear and misunderstanding of the virus that have targeting the Asian American community in recent weeks.
“This is not the values of San Francisco,” he said. “We need to tell people this is not right, when you basically portray a whole group of people as something that is contagious — that’s not what it is.”
New York held their festival February 8th and February 9th as well.
www.nycgo.com/events/lunar-new-year-parade-festival
Democrat John Liu, whom represents parts of Queens in the state Senate, plans to be at the parade Sunday, and urges the public to keep perspective.
“Look at the regular flu. Even the health department, they say very clearly: in any given year, you can fully expect, unfortunately, fully expect 450…to 1,700 people dying from the regular flu in the city,” Liu said.
Mary Cheng is a director with the Chinese American Planning Council, running social programs for kids. She gets steady calls from parents panicked over rumors.
“I think the number one rumor that they have is this idea that it’s going to be fast-acting…and anybody who’s come back from China is infected,” she explained. “We’re trying to explain to them that this is a virus, and although it’s a new virus, it’s like any other virus.”
5,400 people had been asked to self-quarantine in California alone as of Feb. 14
www.reddit.com/r/Wuhan_Flu/comments/f6e7hz/anyone_else_find_this_alarming_more_than_5400/
It was Irresponsible and Criminal for these officials to continue to push and host these events. They gave out false information to the public and risked U.S. Citizen’s lives.