Race and global health experts argue describing COVID-19 as a 'Chinese' virus exacerbates xenophobia amid the rapidly unfolding outbreak while Chinese officials remain rankled by President Trump's repeated use of the phrase.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has doubled down on referring to the coronavirus pandemic as the"Chinese virus" as he tries to distance himself from criticism over how his administration is handling the response to the global pandemic that has shuttered public life across the U.S., roiled stock markets and left more than 200 people dead in the U.S.
Trump and several of his congressional allies continue to use that language to paint the coronavirus crisis as a foreign threat, according to Gordon H. Chang, a professor of history at Stanford University. The president likes the term so much he marked up the prepared text he read from at the start of Thursday's coronavirus briefing - striking out the word"corona" and writing in "Chinese," according to a photo by Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has also rejected use of the term, noting last month that"ethnicity is not what causes the novel coronavirus" while Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Robert Redfield told lawmakers last week it was"absolutely wrong and inappropriate" to refer to it as a"Chinese virus.
T.J. Ducklo, a Biden spokesman, said Trump is projecting his own faults onto others, noting that U.S. tariffs on China and other countries have increased the costs of medical supplies among other items. Fred Guttenberg, a Biden supporter and gun control advocate who lost his daughter in the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, tweeted that it looks like Trump"is using coronavirus to campaign, saying America is under attack from the Chinese and saying Biden is with China."
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