The Hongcouver | Vancouver’s Chinese restaurants are empty amid coronavirus fears. If misinformation is to blame, so is China’s embassy
- For weeks, China’s embassy has been telling people to avoid crowds in Canada, while local authorities blame online mischief for the woes of Chinese restaurants
- But misinformation alone is a poor explanation for empty restaurants – it’s also due to the public’s poor ability to calculate risk on a range of scary subjects
The main problem for Richmond’s Aberdeen Centre food court, in the heart of the most Chinese city outside Asia, used to be a lack of seats.
It heaved around meal times, with tray-toting diners pouncing on tables as soon as an incumbent so much as dabbed their lips with a napkin.
Not any more. The crowds are gone. Most tables are empty. It looks like someone pulled a fire alarm.
In the Aberdeen Centre, and at Chinese restaurants and other businesses in the Vancouver region and across Canada, trade has suffered precipitous declines amid fears of the coronavirus. This is in spite of the fact that there have been just nine known infections in Canada (all of them recent travellers or their close contacts).
Chinese-speaking Vancouverites receive a torrent of real-time updates from family and friends … Little wonder that the official Canadian response seems paltry by comparison
Canadian authorities say misinformation is to blame for those empty seats. At a press conference in Vancouver’s Chinatown on Monday, Canadian health minister Patty Hajdu pinned fault squarely on “rampant” online falsehoods.
