What’s in a name (yeah I’m talking about the virus again)
When I first started posting about corona virus (I see my earliest post on tumblr is Feb 1, but I’ve been talking about this since last December on plurk and twitter), it doesn’t even have an official name yet. I called it 2019-nCoV (as it was named on Jan 7 by researchers) in English posts and Wuhan pneumonia (武漢肺炎) in other platforms (as the media & scientists around the globe called it since last December). The name COVID-19 came out at Feb 12. Wuhan virus, Wuhan pneumonia, Novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, COVID-19, they’re all the same thing - a corona virus, much like SARS but with uncanny similarity as the HIV, brand new and unknown to the world.
So why is the name so important then?
COVID-19, as we known today, was first named Wuhan pneumonia not by some racist assholes who wants China to take the blame, but by Chinese clinical researchers in 2019 December. The virus was observed in many people in Wuhan, one of the largest and most developed major cities in China, the earliest report traced it all the way back to Huanan seafood market. Curious enough though, while the Chinese government claimed that the virus doesn’t show human-to-human transmission, the report suspecting it originating from the market have several subjects who have never been to said market or have not been recently. In the research paper, they called it Wuhan Virus / Wuhan pneumonia, the name is later used by both researchers and journalists global wise. (Including the Chinese state run media.)
When did the name became racist?
As the virus started to spread outside of China in late January, more and more media start covering the news (still not as much but yeah). Using the name Wuhan virus, the way China called it. However, press outside of China is not controlled by the CCP, it’s inevitable that these early reports tie the virus outbreak to CCP - after all, the cover up is definitely why it became so serious in the first place, this would not have happened in a country with free press and democracy. The CCP started to feel like the virus is being used as a tool to attack them, so, despite they’ve been calling it Wuhan virus for weeks now, their state run media started to call out international journalists for being racist against Chinese. The Chinese people started to feel offended when anyone remotely reference the virus as something from China.
The WHO held a press conference on Feb 12, announcing the name of this new virus as COVID-19, and blatantly hinting that any comments associating China with the virus is done out of racism. (I would like to remind you that this is mid February, when the virus haven’t yet have massive outbreaks outside of Asia. This would’ve been a good time when they start interfering and remind the world that precautions are important, much like they did with SARS and MERS. But no, they spent an entire month deciding on a name that 1) common people don’t get 2) inconsistent to early researches, guilt-tripping anyone who dares use a more understandable name, and flagging countries for doing anything to prevent it’s spreading.)
So yeah, this is when the world started to tie virus names to racism, despite this is something that’s been practiced for eons. (See, Ebola Virus, German Measles, Japanese Encephalitis… etc. Spanish flu, one of the deadliest infection to date, isn’t even originated in Spain.) The name of virus is always tied to where it’s first observed / the origination / a memorial incident, and nothing else. It’s not a political play, at least, it’s not supposed to be.
Because the Chinese Communist Party could do no wrong, the Chinese state run media started playing the blame game pretty early on. In late January, there were rumors of the virus being a bio weapon made by the US to destroy China (for being too powerful I guess), the narrative was too ridiculous even to CCP supporters so they only let it flow around as a conspiracy theory on the internet. (Mind you, China does not allow free speech, so any rumors that survived censorship are ones that their government somewhat approved. One of the famous incident during the coronavirus is a group of doctors being arrested in early January for “spreading fear of made-up viruses” when they were really just talking about a suspected SARS case in their private chat.)
Make sure the central government came out clean:
When “America is to blame for the virus” is still too blatant a lie (since there weren’t much cases overseas then) and the Beijing government (CCP central) being too holy to ever done anything wrong, the blame was placed on local government officials for covering up the outbreak. The mayor of Wuhan was forcefully retired but not before going off-script on a live interview, telling the state-run media that he only hid the numbers because the central government refused to give him permission to make the news public. The local officials were later changed into trusted people from the inner circle of China’s leader Xi Jinping.
Overseas outbreaks = welcome mat for blaming other countries:
The CCP didn’t feel comfortable after changing the virus name and blaming everyone who dare speak of it’s association with China as racist. Medias are calling it COVID-19 alright, but they are still talking about how the outbreak is heavily related to communism.
From late January to February, the corona virus started it’s spreading in Japan and later Korea. Due to historical conflicts and government narrative, Japan is one of the most hated countries in China (even more so than America). It’s easy to blame Japan when they failed to contain the virus: the Chinese people will gladly swallow it as fact. There are many reasons why Japan was late and hesitant to set out precautions, mostly because Tokyo is holding the 2020 Olympics and because the WHO told the world that there’s no need to overreact (overreact as in reacting at all). Blaming Japan for bringing the virus all over the world and destroying China’s careful plan of becoming the martyr to save mankind is easy, Chinese officials started calling it the “Japanese pneumonia” and WHO played along, scolding Japan for their carelessness.
That wasn’t enough, though. CCP wanted to cut ties with the virus once and for all. Placing responsibility of the outbreak on other countries still doesn’t make it “not from China”. They need to change the story on where it came from, or else they will never doge blame for the early cover up. This is probably when they remembered the conspiracy theory still floating and growing on weibo (China’s twitter): COVID-19 is planted by America into China. The perfect excuse came fairly soon when the virus start wide spreading in America.
“Evidence” of the virus originating elsewhere:
Before we get into this, I need to remind you that COVID-19 is a brand new virus. It shows similar symptoms to many other epidemics, such as the flu or pneumonia. If a person with corona virus was diagnosed as something else, they will unlikely receive the correct treatment they need. This is why the early cover up by the CCP from December 2019 to January 2020 is such a big deal: people are traveling around the world, transmitting this unknown virus into nations that aren’t aware that there IS an unknown virus. Imagine that you are a doctor and one of your patient’s CT scan came out blurry in their lungs, meaning the person is suffering through lung tissue micro trauma and having trouble breathing - by experience, you’d diagnose said person with pneumonia and give them medicine/treatment as so. There’s no reason to suspect that this one single person with extremely similar symptoms as a common disease is carrying something brand new. (This is why new viruses are usually observed after a certain amount of people were infected.)
Now, back to the blame game.
Because of China’s cover up and the WHO playing along, stopping countries from setting up any precautions, the virus started having massive outbreaks outside of Asia in March. Countries with rising confirmed cases finally understand that something is not right, this kind of number does not fit into early stages of pandemic, this is something that’s clearly been going on for quite some time. Researchers in every countries start tracing where the virus originated in their respective states, and to CCP’s delight, America (and many other countries in Europe) came out with reports stating that some of their patients previously diagnosed with something else at the end of 2019, might actually be carrying the corona virus.
This is the “evidence” CCP is waiting for. If there are cases outside of China before they announced that corona virus is a thing, that means it was these countries to blame for the spread (this logic is extremely flawed and not how epidemiology works btw). What happens next is some of the most dirty yet amusing twitter fights I’ve ever seen: several Chinese officials tweet that “America has been covering up the outbreak and leaving the world to die, they should admit the virus is originated from their country and start being transparent”; American officials including their president start tweeting the virus name not as “COVID-19″ but as “Chinese virus” / “virus from Wuhan, China” in response. The US openly said that if China is trying to change the story of the virus, they are putting their feet down on the matter and will never stop calling it so. (One of the amazing conclusion is that one Chinese official claimed that the US is being delusional, that they should try being transparent like China, because China have been warning the world since 2019 December. And the American official replied that actually it was Taiwan that warned the WHO about the virus in December, while China was still arresting doctors in January. (Because Taiwan is not a member state in the WHO, the warning was ignored.))
CCP was not excepting this kind of backlash from their accusation. They expected the US to take days deciding on a proper official announcement like any other government would, or simply ignore the tweets. They overlooked the fact that 1) the world outside of China is not covered by an enormous firewall blocking everything 2) the Trump administration is addicted to twitter. What they planned out to be the perfect scapegoat turned and bit them in the ass with no dignity.
Now that their go-to card is giving them whiplash, the CCP remembered that there are still several options out there to blame. One country is chosen for its 1) many confirmed cases 2) higher death count than China 3) research speculating that there were cases since 2019 November. Their next target is Italy, for not covering up the numbers and making it seems way dangerous than China claimed it to be.
(And the WHO played into this again, saying that Italy must have done something wrong, or else there’s no reason for them to have less confirmed cases yet more deaths than China.)
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