'White Coats Don’t Protect Us:' Asian Health Care Workers Speak Out Against Rise In Hate Crimes

Natty Oranicha Jumreornvong was assaulted on her way to the hospital.

A man came up to the third-year medical student and called her “Chinese virus,” she said, recounting the February episode. When she tried to de-escalate, he kicked her and dragged her to the ground. The attack left her hands bleeding and legs bruised. When she called for help, nobody came. She was wearing her medical scrubs.

“It’s horrible, it’s happening, and unfortunately, white coats do not protect us from racism,” said Jumreornvong, who is from Thailand and studies at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her assault is part of a litany of racist incidents that she has experienced since the beginning of the pandemic. One patient called her “Kung Flu,” she said, and after a separate rotation at the hospital, a woman with a child came up to her and said “Chinese virus,” telling her to go back to China.

The injuries forced her to take a few weeks off from her hospital rotations, sparking her own activism against such anti-Asian discrimination—and a path toward healing.

Jumreornvong’s story conveys the depth of Asian American hate coursing through the city and nation—bigoted sentiments that extend to health care workers even as they keep COVID-19 patients alive, risk exposure while administering tests and aid the vaccine rollout. Hate crimes are surging across the country against Asian Americans—propelled, multiple studies suggest, by President Donald Trump’s perpetual scapegoating of China for America’s pandemic woes and his repeated references to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus.”

This hate echoes xenophobic sentiments witnessed throughout the city’s and country’s history—like during the 2003 SARS outbreak that left Manhattan’s Chinatown stigmatized. But, the Asian American Bar Association of New York states, “such racism and xenophobia is often caused by a confluence of factors, some of which has little to do with disease itself.” Spikes in such racist attacks have long followed significant events, such as the abuse committed against Middle Easterners and South Asians since 9/11.

Medical experts told Gothamist/WNYC that the anxieties health care workers are experiencing over the increased attacks are shared by Asian American patients, too; some who have avoided medical care during the pandemic.

“We don’t practice medicine in a bubble,” said Michelle Lee, a 30-year-old radiology resident at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. “Racism is just an important public health issue, just as any other medical problem that we’re dealing with.”

As a Korean-American woman who grew up in Flushing, Queens, Lee said the fear is palpable among Asians in the city after a year of rising hate crimes and verbal and physical attacks. She has been spat upon twice. Lingering in the back of her mind is whether the next imaging scan she reads will be from a patient who has suffered a hate crime.

Lee recently led a rally of doctors against anti-Asian discrimination following the Atlanta shootings that targeted massage parlors and killed eight people, including six Asian women. Her efforts join a larger movement against Asian hate in the wake of the mass shooting—an energy that’s led to Black and Asian solidarity protests for the broader goal to dismantle white supremacy. Jumreornvong met Lee in person through this rising movement and now hopes to see more investment in bystander training so those who witness an assault know how to intervene or help.

“We're just protesting violence in our own community,” Lee said. “We all recognize that fighting anti-Asian hate also means fighting for Black Lives Matter.”

The dual role of treating COVID-19 patients amid rising hate has been mentally taxing for Ann Huang, a family nurse practitioner. She works at clinics under Excelsior Integrated Medical Group, typically seeing patients in Sunset Park or Bensonhurst, where she resides. She occasionally practices at another site in Manhattan, where she’ll drive and pay for garage parking because she’s fearful of taking the train. She is constantly on high alert, even if she’s walking just a few blocks to her car.

“I’m living in fear,” said Huang, who took out a life insurance policy last April due to the pandemic. Through the feelings of emotional and physical exhaustion, Haung said she has actively tried to stay tethered to majority-Asian neighborhoods for her family’s safety. But, she worries for her daughters’ mental health.

In Queens, another doctor realized she needed to have a conversation with her son about handling a verbal or physical threat. In March, Dr. Cynthia Pan, the head of geriatrics and palliative care medicine at New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital, broached the issue with her 15-year-old son over lunch.

Just after the conversation, as they left lunch and Pan readied to head to a hospital shift, a man randomly hurried towards her and her son. She stepped to the side, but instead of passing by, he came towards her. They told him to go away, and when her son tried to intervene, the man told her son, “she’s mine.” Her son yelled back and told him to back off—which the man eventually did. He didn’t use any racially targeted language, but Pan said the aggressive incident was alarming enough that afterward, she purchased a whistle, a portable alarm and mace. Research shows that the stress from racially-tinged microaggressions is linked to mental and physical harm, including digestive issues, PTSD and sleep disruption.

“It was a very scary incident, but I’m very glad that I talked to my son and we were prepared,” Pan said, adding that there is sometimes a “tough it out” mentality among the Asian community. But, she feels she needs to stand up and speak out. She’s inspired by the solidarity among hospital workers over the past year—between fighting COVID, Black Lives Matter and now, the movement against anti-Asian hate.

“I don’t think toughing it out, in this instance, is going to work,” Pan said.

This hatred is also a public health issue, doctors said, because older Asian patients have avoided medical treatment due to concerns about being mistreated. Huang said she’d had patients who were sick enough to need higher-level hospital care to address a leg ulcer or low oxygen levels—but their families and the patients declined.

“There’s an emotional trauma,” Huang said. “They are afraid, especially the older folks. Those patients who are 70 and above.”

She doesn’t want to discount patients’ avoidance of specific care due to worries about catching coronavirus in public places, but if it weren’t for the rising hate crimes, she believes she’d have a better chance at convincing those elderly patients to seek the care they need. According to a report in THE CITY, harassment against older Asians surged during the pandemic, even as overall complaints to the NYPD dropped.

Researchers have also found anti-Asian discrimination has led to higher levels of anxiety, depression, physical symptoms, and sleep difficulties and have called for evidence-based stigma reduction and federal investment in mental health services. One patient, who died from COVID-19 last spring, sought only telehealth appointments. Prior to catching coronavirus, someone had spat on him and yelled when he was going to work, according to Dr. Henry Chen, the president of SOMOS Community Care and head of the Excelsior Integrated Medical Group. He estimated seeing 20% to 30% fewer patients at the clinics he oversees, especially among elderly patients.

“They don’t want to take the subway. They don’t want to take the bus, any public transportation,” Chen said. Chen, 62, who moved to the U.S. from China decades ago, said he just wants to see equality. “It is not the American dream for everyone coming to this country, and, not just us, I feel a lot of other immigrants feel the same thing.”