But these overreactions can be hurtful. It’s easy to tell when someone looks at me and the first thing they think about is the coronavirus — I can see the fear, or even disgust. That kind of behavior has caused me to feel more self-conscious about my sneezes in public than I can ever remember feeling, even though the last time I visited China was 2017. I hesitated to write this piece because I didn’t want to open my inbox up to racist emails.