President Joe Biden issued a memorandum on Tuesday banning references to the origins of the Chinese coronavirus in China or the city of Wuhan, because he said phrases like “China virus” inspired “inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric” that “put Asian-American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities, and businesses at risk.”
“The federal government must recognize that it has played a role in furthering these xenophobic sentiments through the actions of political leaders, including references to the Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] pandemic by the geographic location of its origin,” Biden’s memo said.
“Such statements have stoked unfounded fears and perpetuated stigma about Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders and have contributed to increasing rates of bullying, harassment, and hate crimes against AAPI persons,” he continued.
“Today, I’m directing federal agencies to combat the resurgence of xenophobia, particularly against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, that we’ve seen skyrocket during this pandemic. This is unacceptable and it’s un-American,” Biden said when announcing his order at the White House.
“I’ve asked the Department of Justice to strengthen its partnership with the Asian American Pacific Islander community to prevent those hate crimes. I’ve also asked the Department of Health and Human Services to put out best practices for combating xenophobia in our national response to Covid,” he added.
The first cases of the novel coronavirus discovered in 2019 surfaced in Wuhan, the central Chinese capital of Hubei province. Chinese documents leaked to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) indicated that doctors confirmed the existence of a never-before-seen virus in November 2019. No credible research has suggested an alternate location as the origin of the virus.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) recalled the commentary from former President Donald Trump that Biden’s memo alluded to:
No political leaders were named in the memo, but Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump repeatedly used terms like “Wuhan virus”, “China plague” and “kung flu” to describe the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
One week after testing positive for the coronavirus last year, Trump said he was “in very good shape” and that “I beat this crazy, horrible China virus”. He heard earlier said China would “pay a big price” for the pandemic.
The Trump administration responded to criticism of such terminology by stressing the importance of constantly reminding the world where Covid-19 originated, given China’s constant efforts to obfuscate that history. Some suggested using a more politically precise name like “CCP Virus,” CCP being an abbreviation for Chinese Communist Party,” but such terms never achieved widespread usage.
As the SCMP noted, the Chinese government shows no sign whatsoever of reciprocating Biden’s generosity in forbidding U.S. federal offices to discuss where the coronavirus came from: “Chinese diplomats have promoted unfounded theories linking the virus to U.S. military athletes, while state media has reported the virus could have entered China through imported frozen foods, following cases in Chinese ports and among cold storage workers.”
Prior to Covid-19, epidemic diseases were often named after their points of origin; “Ebola” is a river in Africa, for example, while “Zika” is a forest in Uganda. While referring to Covid-19’s origins in China or Wuhan is now officially discouraged, there appears to be little reticence about describing its new strains and mutations using their suspected geographic origins, as with the “U.K. strain,” which is rarely described using its official designation of B.1.1.7.
In the summer of 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a member of Biden’s Democrat Party, began referring to Covid-19 as the “European virus.” He even used the term in his address to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.