Trump's New Fixation

A couple days ago, President Trump suddenly stopped referring to the Covid-19 coronavirus by its common name, which experts and laypeople and the president himself had been using for months, and started using a racist designation: the “Chinese virus.”

The world has been trying to move past the racist disease-naming conventions of the past in recent years, making it all the more telling that Trump has revived them in a moment of crisis. The term he’s been using has potentially dangerous consequences, particularly for Asian Americans.

Looking at Trump’s Twitter account, his megaphone to the nation, he tweeted about “coronavirus” about 40 times between January 24 (the first mention) and March 15. But on March 16, his rhetoric flipped: He hasn’t referred to the “coronavirus” at all and has instead tweeted using his new preferred racist name.

There is a long history of racializing pandemics by attaching them to a specific place and people. Trump’s comments are just yet another example of this lamentable instinct and another illustration of his xenophobia in office. This is the same president who referred to some African countries as “shitholes” in advocating for restrictive immigration policies.

When naming this disease caused by the novel coronavirus, international leaders actually went out of their way to avoid a name with any reference to people, places, or even animals.

In 1918 the Spanish flu didn’t get that name because it started in Spain. It actually started in Kansas. It became commonly known as the Spanish flu because in the middle of World War I, in which Spain remained neutral, Spain was one of the only Western nations willing to report frankly on the pandemic.

The president is not doing his part at all and doesn’t seem to grasp the gravity of his words. Instead, he risks making the situation worse.