The couple wouldn’t stop until Yang took out her camera and started recording, she said. “When someone won’t stop coming towards you during Covid, it is so frightening and hostile,” the writer said. Her footage shows the couple walking away with their dog on a leash as Yang describes what just happened to her. “These people just said go back to where you came from. They called me an oriental, and they were mean to me. And they came really aggressively towards me and my kids,” Yang said in the recording. “Yes these people right here.”

x I am shaking. I went to the dog park to walk my dog. These people came very aggressively towards me (without a mask), called me an oriental & told me to go back to where I came from. I asked her to pls stop coming towards me, she wouldnÃ¢ÂÂt stop, finally I had to get out my camera. pic.twitter.com/deFxcMBGlN — Kelly Yang (@kellyyanghk) April 25, 2020

Researchers at the San Francisco State University Asian American Studies program found last month that since Trump referred to the virus as the “China virus” or “Chinese virus,” there has been an uptick in the news coverage of related discrimination against Asian Americans. “We’ve never received this many news tips about racism against Asians,” the founder of the Asian American news site NextShark told The New York Times. “It’s crazy. My staff is pulling double duty just to keep up.”

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Although the coronavirus pandemic originated in China’s Hubei province, it has spread so rapidly in the United States that New York alone quickly accumulated more COVID-19 cases than China. China is no longer even in the top five states with the highest count of coronavirus cases, according to data released Sunday by Johns Hopkins University. The United States ranks first in the world with 957,016 cases. Spain is second with 226,629 cases and Italy is third with 197,675 cases, followed by France and Germany.

Still, many people use the virus to justify their racist beliefs. Katherine Oung, an 11th grader in Florida, told The New York Times about her experience last month with racism during the coronavirus pandemic. "'Everyone knows Chinese people are disgusting. They'll eat any type of animal. They're dirty,'" Oung quoted her classmates' words. Oung, who is Chinese American, said she considered one of the classmates a friend. "It felt like a stab to my chest," Oung told The New York Times.