In fact COVID-19 was an act of bats. An act of live animal (or “wet”) markets in Wuhan, which is to say an act of the culture that supported their existence. It pains me to acknowledge that on this one point Trump is more or less correct.
Spike Lee, quoted by Variety: “I would like to say this: I wish he would stop saying ‘the Chinese virus’. The president of the United States needs to stop calling this the Chinese virus. Please stop doing that. He’s putting Asian Americans in this country in danger. Stop saying Chinese virus. There’s nobody around him to say, ‘You can’t say this anymore’? That isn’t helping at all. Hopefully his base will understand. You just can’t say that.”
HE to Lee: Calling it COVID-19 should suffice all around, but the corona virus did originate in Wuhan, China. That’s a fact.
Did you speak out against the use of the term West Nile virus, which stigmatized Eastern Africa (and was first identified in 1937 in Uganda)? Did you warn against using the term Ebola virus when it first came into use in 2014, the disease hgving begun in West Africa? What about the stigmatizing that the citizens of Old Lyme, Connecticut, have had to deal with since Lyme disease was diagnosed as having originated in that town in 1975?
