"The pathogen of prejudice'

The Economist published an article on Feb 17, 2020 with a title "The pathogen of prejudice. The coronavirus
spreads racism against - and among - ethnic Chinese".
Read the short extract from it:
“YO VIRUS-BOY! Don’t infect us!” So Andrew Zhou, a Chinese-Canadian in Vancouver, has been taunted in
the school playground. On February 8th Hao Chunxiang, a Chinese university student in the Netherlands,
complained on Facebook that the lift in his dormitory had been spray-painted with the words “DIE CHINESE”.
In Japan the hashtag #ChineseDon’tCometoJapan has been trending on Twitter. Rhea Liang, a doctor in
Australia, tweeted that one of her patients had refused to shake her hand because of her ethnicity."
How can researchers analyze and explain origins of such racist behavior from the perspectives of normative,
interactive and affective social distance? What would you, as a specialist in intercultural communication,
suggest media could do to fight such prejudice?