On "Chinese Coronavirus" and Unprofessional Press Conferences
We all know what coronavirus is, and most of us know what Covid-19 is. So I'm not really sure why certain people are now calling it "Chinese coronavirus".
Apart from I do. Because these certain people are universally Republicans. "Chinese" is not an informative descriptor - it adds no new information that we don't already know. It is pejorative and is designed to assign blame and capitalise on fear and otherisation.
Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state are two prominent lawmakers who have been involved in this:
Pompeo called the virus the “Wuhan coronavirus” on Friday, referring to the Chinese city where the outbreak started, and McCarthy used the term “Chinese coronavirus” on Monday, when he tweeted out a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that has led the US effort to fight the virus.
The CDC website specifically avoids the phrase when talking about Covid-19, the novel strain of coronavirus at the heart of the global outbreak.
Other Republicans, including Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Paul Gosar – who is in self-quarantine – have used similar terms.
China reacted furiously on Monday, with a spokesman for the foreign ministry criticizing US elected officials.
“Despite the fact that the WHO [World Health Organization] has officially named this novel type of coronavirus, certain American politician[s], disrespecting science and the WHO decision, jumped at the first chance to stigmatize China and Wuhan with it. We condemn this despicable practice,” said Geng Shuang....
Academics have warned the practice leads to stigma and racism, and the World Health Organization sent a memo to governments and media organizations at the end of February, urging people not to use the terms “Wuhan Virus”, “Chinese Virus” or “Asian Virus”.
“Governments, citizens, media, key influencers and communities have an important role to play in preventing and stopping stigma surrounding people from China and Asia in general,” the WHO said. [source]
One of McCarthy's colleagues (of Chinese descent) was incensed:
I’m embarrassed to be his colleague. I’m so disgusted. We await his apology to the nation, the Chinese-American and #AAPI community and to his own constituents. https://t.co/eKYbffqOww— Grace Meng (@Grace4NY) March 10, 2020
This is dog-whistle racism. There is no other rational explanation for this. Though there is precedent for calling outbreaks by their geographical origin, this is not always correct and serves to stigmatise people from these places:
Misidentifying illnesses as being from one country or one ethnic group is a common theme (the 2009 swine flu outbreak was initially labelled “Mexican flu”) and often leads to stigma and racism. In Spain “the name caused offence for a long time after”, said Prof Julia Gog, a mathematician who researches flu dynamics at the University of Cambridge.“When we give talks we’re careful to call it 1918 influenza – there’s no way its origin was Spain. There’s a joke that when an epidemic is said to emerge first in a place, it almost certainly didn’t. Except Wuhan might actually be right.”
Misidentifying illnesses as being from one country or one ethnic group is a common theme (the 2009 swine flu outbreak was initially labelled “Mexican flu”) and often leads to stigma and racism. In Spain “the name caused offence for a long time after”, said Prof Julia Gog, a mathematician who researches flu dynamics at the University of Cambridge.
“When we give talks we’re careful to call it 1918 influenza – there’s no way its origin was Spain. There’s a joke that when an epidemic is said to emerge first in a place, it almost certainly didn’t. Except Wuhan might actually be right.” [source]
This sort of cheap trick sickens me. It probably did originate in Wuhan, but suddenly, in the middle of the crisis, naming it so can only be seen in the cynical manner in which it is no doubt intended.
In other connected news, President Trump is an absolute chump. Again. This press conference from a few days back is an embarrassment:
I know I keep banging on about the guy, but holy cow, is Trump the most unpresidential leader the US has ever had by a country mile!? The man is full of lies and misinformation, half-truths and disinformation. Remember, this is a scam artist who created a scam health company, the Trump Network, and a scam university, Trump University (for which Trump settled three lawsuits after his election for fraud and illegal business practices to the tune of $25 million).
So, what did we learn from this conference?
- Trump primarily gets his coronavirus news from FOX and not from his experts: "As of the time of leaving the plane with you, we had 240 cases. That's at least what was on a very fine network known as FOX News." Holy macaroni! This man speaks like a child. He's literally at the CDC and still refers to FOX.
- As I have said before, Trump is very transactional in his approach to everything political. He sees human beings as mere numbers, and literally calls them this. Talking of the passengers trapped in quarantine on a cruise ship off the US shores, he says: "I mean, frankly, if it were up to me, I would be inclined to say, 'Leave everybody on the ship for a period of time, and you use the ship as your base.' But a lot of people would rather do it a different way. They would rather quarantine people when they land. Now, when they do that, our numbers are going to go up. Okay? Our numbers are going to go up.... I would rather - because I like the numbers being where they are.I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship." This is horrific.
- He lies and lies. "Anyone who wants a test can get a test.... Anyone who needs a test gets a test. We - they're there. They have the tests.... They're all set. They have them out there." Apart from there are not enough test kits - they are running out - and he refused to answer as to whether uninsured people would have access to tests. They literally walked out of another press conference as this question was asked.
- Trump has no grasp of language. And he has to relate everything back to himself. Everything is "beautiful" or "perfect". Perfect phone calls, beautiful letters. And now: "And the tests are beautiful. Anybody that needs a test gets a test.... And the tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect."
So on and so forth. Politico have reported on how the communication of scientific ideas and news is seriously compromised by Trump, directly, but also in agencies not wanting to "antagonize" Trump.
The whole incident “opened our eyes” to political interference in the Trump administration, which made scientists “more nervous” about speaking out, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the weather service, told POLITICO. The official asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
Trump himself has regularly dismissed scientific experts and once boasted to an interviewer he had “a natural instinct for science,” pointing out his uncle was an MIT professor. His own statements suggest otherwise: He’s blamed California wildfires on inadequate raking of forests, claimed noisy windmills cause cancer and enthusiastically described a stealth fighter jet as “invisible."
Perhaps more alarming to scientists, still, are the ways they say Trump’s administration has distorted or smothered their work, particularly on energy and climate change. For instance, his administration tried to relax car emissions rules using botched data that purported to show that pollution saves lives. It's also refused to publicize dozens of government-funded studies on how climate change could hurt crops and create new health risks.
Hoping to convey factual information to Americans without antagonizing Trump, public health groups that are often quick to take issue with the president have been relatively mute in challenging him on coronavirus — even when he overpromises on a vaccine or mistakenly claims testing for the virus is running smoothly. In fact, the CDC-developed diagnostic test, the government's policies on who to test, and the lab capacity for conducting the test, have all fallen short. That’s let the disease spread, without enabling public health agencies to know how far it has spread or where it will hit hardest.
What a mess.
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