Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
Okay, so here's why calling it the China virus or China plague is racist. And to be clear, it's not enormously so.
It targets the country of origin for no good reason. This may be accurate, but it sets a bad precedent. The so-called Spanish flu was thus named in large part because Spain reputedly had a bad time with it. In the case of Covid-19, the virus did originate in China, but its greatest effects have actually been felt elsewhere. Would you want it to be called the America plague, or the Trump plague, or something else, because the United States bungled the shit out of its pandemic response? I thought not. That wouldn't really be fair, or helpful.
And that's my next point. We have names for this virus which are not racially or geographically motivated. Covid-19, the coronavirus (though that's less descriptive) and even SARS CoV2. There is no good reason not to use one of these neutral names, and plenty of reason to avoid the China virus or China plague epithets. Ever notice how most of the people who use those particular terms, by the way, have some sort of beef with China?
Yeah, that's my next point. When you call it the China virus or China plague, your average citizen is going to become wary of anything Chinese. Why else do you think Asian-American businesses suffered during the early stages of the pandemic, and Asian-Americans were unreasonably targeted? Folks have been primed to focus on where this virus came from, and who's there, and what they may or may not have done to release this virus into the world (remember, we're like seven months in and we still have no definitive proof it was man-made or released on purpose). Basically, language like this encourages snap judgments and other forms of racism. It's a catalyst.
So is it horribly, awfully racist to call it the China virus? No, not really. But it's a spark, and it should be well demonstrated by now that just using neutral language helps everyone and hurts no one. We should not be emulating the nomenclature from a hundred years ago; we should be improving on it. Instead of saying "nothing was wrong with Spanish flu, so nothing is wrong with China virus", we should flip that narrative. "Spanish flu wasn't a particularly nice way to refer to it, and this can affect everyone, so let's find a term that doesn't stack the deck against a particular race, area or nationality".
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