GOP is reviving old history of blaming outsiders for disease: historian

WASHINGTON - Some Republican politicians are reviving the old history of blaming outsiders for pandemics, but the evidence never backed it up before, and it does not support such claims today either, a US historian wrote in an article published on The Washington Post recently.

Americans have always linked pandemics to those deemed outsiders, said Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, noting that "they provide a convenient scapegoat, absolving the rest of us from responsibility for the disease and death in our midst".

In 1862, California physician Arthur B. Stout published a scathing report, asserting that newcomers from China were spreading tuberculosis, syphilis and other diseases that could "insidiously poison the well-springs of life" and "corrode the vitals of our strength and prosperity" in the United States, said Zimmerman.

Zimmerman said that is exactly what Republican politicians have been saying since the coronavirus pandemic began: the virus is being brought here by foreigners and immigrants.

"It speaks to an old theme in American history: When an epidemic arrives, we blame non-Americans," said Zimmerman.

The coronavirus is spreading most rapidly in places with low vaccination rates, not high immigration, the article noted.

But in the states with the most cases and deaths like Florida, politicians are pointing fingers at Latin American immigrants instead of working to change behaviors, said the article.