Fighting over what to call coronavirus is a silly waste of time

Moreover, as T. Becket Adams of the Washington Examiner has chronicled, many of the media outlets condemning the practice of referring to it as the “Chinese coronavirus” or the “Wuhan virus” used the same terminology until fairly recently, when the WHO coined the official name “COVID-19.” The New York Times posted a link to a Jan. 21 article, tweeting: “The first U.S. case of the Wuhan coronavirus has been confirmed in Washington State.” Even the Chinese government called it the “Wuhan virus” at first.

This also leaves out the fact that China deserves to be blamed for this turning into a pandemic. It initially tried to cover up the outbreak, refusing to cooperate with international health agencies and going so far as to arrest doctors who tried to notify the public of the dangers. Why people should be so eager to carry water for China’s PR cleanup operation is beyond me.

So on one level the woke warriors are just wrong. But there’s another dynamic at work as well.

While it’s not racist to refer to it as the Chinese coronavirus or Wuhan virus, there are people on the right eager to play into the very stereotype the left is decrying by refusing to use the official name.