In the third and final blog sharing findings from a survey of attitudes towards the Hazara Shia in Quetta, Pakistan (following government broadcast messages referring to ‘the Shia virus’), Mohammad Aman and Sadiqa Sultan compare and contrast the responses of men and women and postulate what factors may lie behind them. Local girls on Tony Abad Mountain, Mariabad Quetta, Pakistan. Credit: Habib Qasimii While the Covid-19 pandemic has affected all communities around the world, minority communities have evidently been hit hard. Described by UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres as “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering”. Examples include Asian and Asian-origin communities around the world, especially the Chinese, experiencing racist violence and discrimination, Muslims in India being made scapegoats for the spread of coronavirus, while in Pakistan, the gravity and extent of discrimination against the Hazara Shia community in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak had never been seen there before, even given the fact that Hazara Shia have already suffered over twenty years of escalating violence and targeting.