The pandemic we know as the coronavirus is a hot topic that I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing about but need to stay on top of. Especially when people start to put out false rumors about the virus that damages a whole community of people. For instance, about a month ago President Trump publicly referred to coronavirus as the “Chinese flu”.
This statement perpetuates a racist implication that is very contradictory. Even though, the coronavirus originated from China, which Trump could’ve been referring to when he gave it that specific moniker, doesn’t mean it specifically came from Chinese people themselves. If anything, they were the first ones that were most affected because of someone supposedly eating a horseshoe bat. No one specifically knows who the human or the bat hosts were, yet people are still prone to place blame on something we can’t control.
In this case, China or any Asian country is going to get a bad reputation for being the ones who started the pandemic when it could’ve just started with one person. They are also probably losing way more economically than the United States because loads more people are dying, all imports and exports have been shut down, and unemployment has skyrocketed. Then, you have other Asian people, who may not even originate from China, get major backlash because people will think that since they look Chinese, they must virus which is obviously false.
With all the odds against them right now, this moniker will only add to their stress and struggles while also boasting to racists that it’s okay to discriminate like Trump.
