alt Hacker NewsCalling it the “Chinavirus” was obviously racist and weird. It was an ex posto facto thing to claim saying it was a lab leak was racist. I’m sure someone said that, however, no one serious was nor was it a common position.
Replies
People immediately started suggesting that the idea to close the border to Chinese travelers was racist. After it happened you even had the ever-politicized Lancet jump in claiming that such actions were "anchored in fear, misinformation, racism, and xenophobia." [1]
Similarly, you're referencing a name that was uncommonly used. People mostly called it the Wuhan Virus, which would be a far more typical name than "COVID-19". Major outbreaks are regularly named based on their origin: Spanish Flu, Hong Kong Flu, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Ebola, West Nile Virus, Marburg Virus, Zika Virus, Mexican Swine Flu, etc.
> It was an ex posto facto thing to claim saying it was a lab leak was racist. I’m sure someone said that, however, no one serious was nor was it a common position.
I think you are misremembering.
> The lab-leak theory had been floated by President Trump and others in his circle in April last year. It was widely dismissed at the time as an unfounded conspiracy theory with racist undertones.
https://theconversation.com/covid-19-why-lab-leak-theory-is-... (2021)
> New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli deleted a tweet Wednesday night that said the COVID-19 "lab leak theory" had "racist roots."
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ny-times-covid-reporter-... (2021)
> The lab-leak theory came to legitimacy by a circuitous path. It was first auditioned by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo shortly after lockdown started, but journalists were quick to distance themselves from its overtones of crude Trumpian racism. Nevertheless the theory gained new life last spring, when some of those same journalists — abetted by a chorus of concern trolls — began to question if they had been blinded by liberal partisanship.
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-42/politics/lab-leak-theor... (2022)
Some of this was a case of people failing to recognise that Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, reasoning (implicitly) like this:
Trump lies all the time + Trump said X => not X
instead of like this:
Trump says whatever suits him, regardless of the truth + Trump said X => no significant change to our credence in X
> Calling it the “Chinavirus” was obviously racist and weird.
That was a dumb Trumpism for sure, but separately from that, here in Australia, before the global spread of covid became too obvious to ignore, there was a sense among right-thinking people that even being concerned about it, let alone wanting to take any kind of action, was a manifestation of anti-Chinese racism / very literal xenophobia.
[dead]
I don't the formula: place + virus is racist. Racism is a serious issue and shouldn't be labelled on things that aren't making judgement using someone's race.
Normally city + virus using country + virus is incorrect. But to call it racist or transphobic or fascist would be an incorrect usage.