What’s in a name? Why Trump’s racist labeling of the coronavirus is more than a political move
When Donald Trump referred to the novel coronavirus as the “Chinese virus,” he was doing what he does best: Making an inflammatory statement guaranteed to offend many, occupy headlines, and derail the conversation from his handling of a sensitive situation.
But the US president’s statement (and subsequent defense) is not just offensive, it violates World Health Organization guidelines for naming diseases. These best practices, which WHO laid out in 2015, “aim to minimize unnecessary negative impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”
Naming viruses is a politically fraught task; the WHO document discourages the use of geographic labels, people’s names, animal species, and cultural or occupational references. Bird flu, Ebola, and Lyme disease then, are all in violation.
Looking to a historical example, you can see just how much sticking power even a misnomer can have. The name “Spanish Flu” emerged after Spanish newspapers, free from wartime censorship, were the first to report the disease, whose geographic origins are still unknown.
Disease names can also have detrimental effects on industry - the naming of H1N1 as “swine flu” resulted in a $1.1 billion hit to the pork industry. And though the use of such names in this instance is so far limited to a few US Republican lawmakers, there have been dozens of racist assaults reported in several countries since the outbreak began.
Despite Trump’s comment making headlines and contributing to a fracturing US-China relationship, most global leaders and media outlets are still following WHO’s guidance, which explains why using the official names of diseases is so important.
The organization itself acknowledges the confusion between the name for the virus, “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),” and the disease it causes, “COVID-19.”
Communication from authorities about the virus and disease names are specifically designed to avoid unnecessary panic: “From a risk communications perspective, using the name SARS can have unintended consequences in terms of creating unnecessary fear for some populations, especially in Asia which was worst affected by the SARS outbreak in 2003,” according to WHO.
So if WHO has already officially named the disease, how much damage can Trump’s comment really do?
Trump’s use of language has had both lexical and real effects. His pervasive use of “fake news” led the phrase to a place of legitimacy as several lexicographic organizations’ “word of the year,” and coincided with a growing distrust of the American media.
Trump doesn’t have the power to rename the coronavirus to suit his political motivations unless the media and the public give it to him. As linguist and philosopher George Lakoff puts it, “when you repeat Trump, you help Trump” -- this seems unavoidable in any media or political commentary, which is why I’ve only quoted him once.
The president knows what he is doing in trying to reframe COVID-19, and his labeling of the virus is already starting to have the same effect as some of his past offensive comments - chiefly, distracting from his administration’s handling of the outbreak.
The WHO guidance places the responsibility on scientists, national authorities, and the media to issue an appropriate name when diseases are first reported. But it is up to political leaders to use that name, or else risk harm to people, industry, and understanding of the public health threat.
