Two recent viral videos showing hostility directed toward Asian people in NYC have raised concerns about racist reactions to the coronavirus epidemic.

On Sunday, a Facebook user shared a video of a woman wearing a face mask who is seen inside a subway station charging a man who allegedly called her a "diseased bitch" and then struck her.

In a phone interview with Gothamist, the Facebook user, who asked that we identify her by the pseudonym "Gin" because of a desire for privacy, said she passed by a woman sitting at the top of a stairwell inside the Grand Street D station in Chinatown, wearing a yellow face mask and sunglasses.

"She was telling people to move to the right," she said. Gin said she proceeded to exit the station through the turnstile, but looked back and noticed a man talking to the woman. At one point, she heard him calling her a "diseased bitch." The woman, she said, seemed to be trying to ignore him, but later the man hit her on the head.

At that point, the woman started running after the man with a glass bottle, she said.

Gin, who began filming the attack in hopes of getting the man's face on video, said she tried to intervene by pulling the man away from the woman. The man can be heard in the video shouting at someone not to touch him, which Gin said was directed at her.

In her Facebook post, which she has since taken down, Gin wrote that both parties seemed at fault, "but the situation escalated with racial tension."

An MTA transit officer appeared during the altercation, and Gin said he can be heard in the video saying, "Chill, chill."

Gin said she could not tell whether the woman was Asian because of the mask and sunglasses, but she was concerned that the anxiety over the coronavirus outbreak was creating a dangerous environment. She said that on WeChat, the Chinese messaging app, she read people questioning the woman's state of mind, saying that she appeared to be drunk.

"It doesn't make it acceptable for him to act out in such a violent way," she said.

On Tuesday night, the NYPD announced that they were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime and asking those involved to come forward. As of Wednesday, a police spokesperson said there was no complaint report on file. The 15-second clip has garnered over 91,000 views.

Over the last week, city officials have been intensifying their warnings against discrimination resulting from heightened public anxiety about the virus, which originated in Wuhan, China and has since infected more than 20,000, the overwhelming majority of whom are in central China. Nearly 500 people have died from the disease. As of Wednesday, there have been 12 confirmed cases in the United States, but none in New York state nor the five boroughs.

"I want to be clear, this is about a virus, not a group of people," tweeted Dr. Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on Sunday. "There is NO excuse for anyone to discriminate or stigmatize people of Asian heritage."

On Tuesday, Dr. Henry Chen, the president of SOMOS, a nonprofit network of health care providers that serve Chinese patients across the city, issued a statement warning of "increased xenophobia against the Asian American population." He told Gothamist that he became worried after speaking to an individual in Flushing who told him he had been verbally assaulted while walking on the street. "He wasn't even wearing a mask," Dr. Chen said.

Dr. Chen said that other anecdotes by Chinese New Yorkers have also been circulating on WeChat and Youtube.

"We need to stand up and say we are New Yorkers here and we are equal," he said. "The illness is a disease no one wanted."

He added that because of the increased use of social media, rumors and scaremongering are spreading faster and wider than during the SARS epidemic.

An Instagram story video recently posted by a 20-year-old New Yorker has also unleashed a wave of criticism. In the short clip, Matthew DeGuida films an Asian woman who appears to be a can collector going through garbage on the street. A voice is then heard saying to her, “Oh, this is why you have a fucking virus. Keep picking through the garbage you fucking idiot.”

DeGuida took the post down, but not before other Instagram users captured it themselves and reposted it. "REPOST REPORT, Do what you gotta do and spread awareness bc what he did was not ok!! wrote an account user named @fannayy.

In a phone interview with Gothamist, DeGuida acknowledged that he was in fact the person who verbally attacked the woman in the video. He said he shot the video while walking by himself in downtown Manhattan several weeks ago.

He said as a result of the video he lost his job at as a real estate agency in Staten Island called Precious Properties. He said he was "deeply sorry" for what he did.

"These videos are not who I am," he said. "I made a stupid mistake and I am owning up to it. I am, in no way, shape or form, a racist."

Gin said she was also worried that the incidents might lead to increased racial tensions between Asians and non-Asians. She said she took down the video because she did not want to promote stereotypes of Asian women as helpless and possible anti-black sentiment. "People make their own assumptions," she said.

She urged all New Yorkers to be vigilant in the current atmosphere. "We need to stand against ignorance and have solidarity against the fact that people are being targeted," she said.