"F--- YOU, CHINA" illuminates the night sky. The beacon of hate comes from a hand-painted sign, trimmed with white lights, on a homeowner's front lawn.
The jaw of a 38-year-old Vietnamese American man is fractured on both sides and his left collar bone is broken -- physical reminders of the assailant who he said yelled, "Coronavirus, get the f--- out of here!"








Kylam Nguyen, a Vietnamese American, was assaulted in a hate-fueled attack.
Kylam Nguyen, a Vietnamese American, was assaulted in a hate-fueled attack.Kylam Nguyen


An instructor at an after-school program has instituted a policy requiring only children of Asian descent wear masks.
These are just a few of the stories I'm covering in the Philadelphia area as COVID-19 spreads across the country. The novel coronavirus has mutated for some into a virus of hate against Asian Americans and my fear of getting sick is now overshadowed by my terror over the backlash against my community.
Normally, it takes a lot to scare me. I'm an investigative journalist and the work that I do is not for the faint of heart. People routinely slam doors in my face, threaten to sue and chase me off their properties. I'm used to being in hostile territory when I'm on the job, but feeling unsafe when I'm off duty is new.
And the stories keep coming. Local students emailed me that they are "disheartened" and "frightened" by a viral video of a freshman at the University of the Sciences of Philadelphia. In it, she is seen laughing and saying about Chinese people, "I think we should put something in their DNA so when you turn 13, you just die … so it's like a quinceanera but it's death."
Even before the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it had "set off a disturbing wave of prejudice against people of Chinese and East Asian ethnicity." In six weeks, the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council collected 1,700 reports of racist incidents against AAPIs. Complaints of anti-Asian discrimination filed with the New York City Commission on Human Rights are up 92% in the last three months compared to the same time last year. Officials attribute the spike to Asian Americans being blamed for COVID-19 even though the state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, says research shows the coronavirus came to New York from Europe, not China.