Like everyone else, I charge my phone on my nightstand. Within minutes of waking, I reach for it and from the cozy warmth of my bed, I check my personal emails, respond to texts, look through my news alerts, dawdle over Instagram, and scroll through Facebook to see what’s been going on in my sphere while my eyes are still bleary.  Before my workday responsibilities, which include managing my company’s social media accounts, I take the time to go through my own.  It may not be a healthy habit, but it’s a common ritual I share with many. Innocuous, universal, unremarkable.  However, since the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic reared its ugly head, this ritual has become a source of dread. As my Facebook feed loads, I feel tendrils of anxiety unfurl from my stomach. My heart beats a little faster, my breath catches, and I feel a weight in my chest, nervous about what fresh attack awaits me.  I’m not alone in this trepidation. Pandemic conspiracy theories are rife as people grow tired of the limitations of quarantine and spend too much time in the deepest recesses of their thoughts. Political rants, misinformation and finger-pointing rhetoric have mounted to crescendos as folks feel increasingly helpless against the onslaught of bad news and lash out.  … But you see, I am first-generation Chinese with an ethnic name. And to a shockingly, overwhelmingly large amount of my fellow citizens ― most recently demonstrated by this divisive election ― I am part of the problem.  Beyond the worry for my health as part of the susceptible population of sufferers of autoimmune disease, beyond my fears for immunocompromised immediate family members and my concerns for my future prospects and job security as a writer specializing in two of the hardest-hit industries ― travel and food ― I have the additional burden of apology to shoulder. The responsibility to defend an entire country of people to which, as an ABC (American-born Chinese), I have no more than ancestral kinship.  It started with the harmful rhetoric “Chinese virus.” With President Donald Trump’s insistent usage of this slur, he put a target squarely on the back of one minority group. In April, I put up one post on my personal Facebook, asking for friends to scrub this term from their vernacular.   It incited a flame war.  Extended members of a family I was once welcomed into with open arms released hateful words in defense of our president, convinced that my plea was an attack on him. They told me and friends who sprang to my defense to get out of this country if we didn’t like it ― something I’ve heard throughout my life, but didn’t think I’d hear from folks who had me over for Sunday dinners, people I’ve celebrated and mourned with.  People who I thought were my friends refused to understand why I was upset by the use of this term. They didn’t want to read about how pinning the disease’s origin on one culture put all Asians at risk; didn’t want to hear about why I was afraid that the types of “patrio

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