‘Angry and emotional’: survey shows half of Japan’s health experts faced threats, abuse during Covid-19

The study examined public reactions to experts who appeared in the media between February 2020 and March 2021 and found that scientists had received death threats or threats of physical or sexual violence.

The research was carried out by a team led by Mikihito Tanaka, a professor at the Faculty of Political Economics and Science at Waseda University, and paralleled similar studies in other countries. It also determined that 80 per cent of the experts who were the target of attacks felt psychological and emotional impacts.

Professor Hiroshi Nishimura, an epidemiologist at Kyoto University and another high-profile expert in the fight against the virus, received a letter in the post containing a box-cutter blade and had the tyres of his car slashed.

Other attacks came in “too-many-to-count” phone calls, letters and email messages, Tanaka told This Week in Asia.

“The period we studied was before vaccines were being produced, so there were fewer claims about the dangers of vaccines, but it is clear that day by day, the ‘anti-vaxxer’ movement got stronger,” Tanaka said.

Others insisted on referring to the illness as the “Wuhan virus”, after the laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan that some have alleged was the source of the outbreak. There have also been claims that it was a man-made virus that was being weaponised, and even that it was released on purpose.

“Nationalists tended to claim in their messages that China was responsible for the virus spreading and that it was made by the Chinese,” he said. In some cases, far-right groups staged protest events outside scientists’ offices to air their claims.

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