It seems like Western democracies are very ill-equipped to deal with problems of this nature where all future outcomes are bad and the chosen executive has to deliberately choose the least worse. Facing such scenarios it's often the case our leaders choose not to take any political damage and do nothing until we are at the edge of catastrophe or take half-hearted measures that solve nothing. To take any deliberate and effective action would be not seen be seen as prescient aversion, but considered a wasteful diversion. The social, political and media environments, in particular the "news of the day" media, of the West are suited to guiding executives towards quick and decisive actions in the midst of the crisis because they are biased towards describing the here and now rather than the where and when. For most problems a society faces this may be a sufficient means of dealing with those issues. However in pandemics there are two catastrophes happening simultaneously, the one people think is happening in their midst based on the here and now, and the far more severe catastrophe epidemiologists know is happening based on the where and when. At the start of this crisis Western governments reacted to the former in the expected manner, that is with half-hearted measures and a dismissive attitude, what we needed was for them to react to the crisis epidemiology was describing.
There is very little excuse for Western governments during this pandemic. They caught a lucky break with the SARS outbreak in 2003 and became complacent, choosing not to bolster responses to epidemics as Japan, Taiwan and S.Korea have done. Then they wasted the time lag between the virus outbreak in China to it reaching their countries by declining to take effective actions.
Imagine if you're about to go skydiving and I'm responsible for packing your chute. As I pack, you notice a cord looks badly frayed. I tell you, "The cord is totally not frayed! They all look like that." Then I tell you, "Don't worry, we'll replace it before you go out." Then you find out we didn't actually replace it, and you look up on the internet that it can easily kill you. Then I say, "I knew it was a problem all along but we have a plan in place to handle that."
Would all of that make you feel less or more afraid of your skydiving experience?
I agree with you that this needs to not become any kind of a racial thing against Chinese people. But I'm going to stick with the facts, especially when someone is trying to paint a counter-factual lie of a narrative.
Please don't propagate this term, I understand your feelings but this term was absolutely intended to divide and using it can cause harm to Asian Americans.
Is that confirmed, or just hypothesized?
> and yet I don't see folks going around calling it the bat flu.
It's not a flu. But I wouldn't have a problem with people calling it the bat plague or whatever.
> but calling it the "wuhan flu" and "chinese flu" appears to have begun by a concerted effort to deflect attention from the administration's mishandling.
Given the attributed source of the first uses (of which I am aware) of the term "chinese flu", that seems almost certainly true.
> but this term was absolutely intended to divide
No, it was intended to evade. That's different. You said it yourself: "deflect".
Why is placing the place of origin on China (the nation), and the blame on the Chinese government, confused with placing the blame on a race?
(Yes, there are bigots and jerks who are looking for an excuse to go get racist on someone. There are some. I'm not sure that we should change our language just to avoid giving them an excuse, though, in the same way that we didn't go to these extremes for H1N1. There may be some damage to some actual people - and let's be clear, people who don't deserve it - but free speech is also a value that I uphold. I don't think we should let bigots and jerks control which words we're allowed to use.
And I've seen you elsewhere cite the Nazis and their statements about the Jews. Well, by that point, it will be time for measures equivalent to what we're doing for CoronaVirus, because the damage will be severe.)
It already is. My (conservative, right-voting) non-Chinese Asian parents are slightly nervous about being in public in our town, and my dad's car's mirror was smashed a couple nights ago.
> But I'm going to stick with the facts, especially when someone is trying to paint a counter-factual lie of a narrative.
COVID-19 is its scientific name: Coronavirus Disease 2019.
If you say covid-19, you can still disagree that it can be a dogwhistle, you can just say it that way because you want to stick with the scientific facts.
> And I think there is some value in factually pointing that out, and not letting the government of China create some it-was-some-US-soldiers fairy tale.
I agree that there's value in this. Letting Chinese propaganda and digital interests (continue to) run rampant is, from my layman perspective, a mistake. See TikTok and Discord for examples.
I also think it can be done in a way that doesn't catch families like mine in the crossfire: e.g. "that article is wrong, covid-19 actually started in China."
And over again.
Just this morning, CNN was frothing at the mouth at Trump calling it the "China virus" -- I mean, yeah, it's a virus that came from China -- and they have an op-ed on how this term is stoking xenophobia.
Well, if one believed that both these things were equally true, which one would be more worthwhile writing about?
I've seen a LOT of stories about the problems of hoarding, pleas to stop hoarding, etc...
I just assume bad cases of confirmation virus when I see claims like this, now.
The usage of that term is solely to try and deflect responsibility for anything domestic to China and pass the buck... it also has the potential to cause hate crimes in a time when we really should be unifying as nations.
That's because it is. There have been many reports of harassment and assaults on Chinese Americans, and this kind of label doesn't go away. The term "Spanish Flu" is still used 100 years later, not because it originated there (it didn't -- it almost certainly originated in midwestern USA) but because the media paid more attention there.
The terms we use matter.
This is an extreme, uncited, and frankly inflammatory extrapolation. There have been only a handful of such attacks -- I believe 5-ish (reported by The New Yorker and CNN). It's just the typical race-baiting we've seen that generates outrage clicks. Calling it the "China Virus" has no more societal impact (which is: minor at best) than the "Spanish Flu."
Really, it just strengthens my point about the nonsense the media is peddling, instead of asking the populace to remain calm, take precautions, and stay safe.
How about I provide some personal anecdata instead?
My (Asian) parents -- who prefer Fox over CNN and vote right, in case anyone fears they're under the spell of frothing journalists -- have been more nervous about going about in public. My dad's car's mirror was smashed a couple nights ago.
In a similar way that I'm not as deeply affected by the current economic environment as a low wage worker is, you're not as affected by the cultural perception as people like my family are. With that in mind, I ask that you acknowledge that such acts could very well be more common than the sensationalized ones that liberal media eagerly pounce upon, and thus more common than you personally might be aware of.
How many are an acceptable number? Or tolerable number?
Dogwhistling for racism isn't an innocent action and deserves no understanding, it is hate filled and driven out of self-interest by those doing it.
This is an absolutely insane analogy -- not to mention grossly off-base. No one is scapegoating the Chinese people (or, even less so, Americans that happen to have Asian ancestry). Calling it the "Chinese Virus" simply points to its geographic source, i.e. Wuhan, China.
Yeah, Godwin's Law strikes again. Not everything is literally Hitler.
> This is an extreme, uncited, and frankly inflammatory extrapolation. There have been only a handful of such attacks -- I believe 5-ish (reported by The New Yorker and CNN).[0]
So nobody is doing this? Or have there been incidents that you yourself have previously acknowledged?
I tried civilly engaging in discourse with you earlier[1]. But now it seems like you're arguing with people just to argue, not to actually discuss these topics.
Also, you can correct people who are mistaken about where it originated without saying "Chinese flu". E.g. "actually, the coronavirus originated in China". I remarked on this to another user who said they just wanted to stick to the facts about its origins.[2]
If you're intent on making sure China is regarded as the source and/or culprit, you can emphasize further by adding something like, "and that's why the majority of cases and deaths from [coronavirus/covid-19] were in China. It started there." And that can be said perfectly fine without "Chinese virus".
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22621821
This time around the outbreak originated in China that covered up the issue initially and ended up making the issue a lot worse than it could have been. Additionally, once everyone should've been paying attention on a global scale, Mr President down there in the US just tried to downplay the possible effects of a pandemic and it looks, at the moment, like he again just made everything worse.
Usually we can sit safe and confident at home that the government is overreacting to the situation and everything will be fine, this time around the authorities most globally visible (the US and China where the outbreak started) have obviously bungled their response and we're seeing a lot of panic because people don't have faith in the ability for the globe to respond in a unified manner.