It’s been taken for granted by even well meaning people that the outbreak in Italy was brought in by Chinese garment workers who had set up shop in Italy in the last 20 years. Alas that is not the case at all.
In Prato, which has the biggest community of chinese immigrants in Italy, there wasn’t one single case of COVID19 among the 50,000 chinese immigrants. Italy as a whole has an infection rate of 115 per 100,000, which means that you would expect 57 COVID19 cases among these 50,000 Chinese Italians. Instead there wasn’t one single case. And it was no accident. These Chinese immigrants knew about the seriousness of the coronavirus and took precautions before anyone else.
Here in the US, travelers from Wuhan were indeed responsible for the first few cases of COVID19 on the West Coast. But overall relatively few of our COVID19 cases originated in China. The New York Times has tried to exhaustively trace the source for as many American COVID19 cases as possible. What they found was that 15 cases could be traced to travels in China. 39 cases from travels in Italy. 187 cases from travels inside the US. 42 from Grand Princess. 43 from Diamond Princess. And a huge number from various retirement homes and convalescent homes. Just as in Italy, relatively few cases have been imported from China. There is no reason for anyone to scapegoat Chinese immigrants.