Strange word to describe that, seems rather fair actually. Do you think UK, south African, brazilian variant are 'despicable' ?

The thing is, the virus already had a name. He just refused to call it by its official name, because that wasn't offensive enough for him.

I think it's substantially different.

Initial outbreaks of viruses occur geographically at random (with China having a >1/6 chance); the fact that there are significant UK, South African, and Brazilian variants has a much lower random component and a much higher deterministic component. It also illustrates where those variants are still primarily spreading.

If one of those variants become globally dominant, I doubt we will continue to name them after the location.

I agree that was in poor taste, but would you say the naming of "Zika virus", "Ebola virus", or "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" is despicable?

The WHO has issued guidance in 2015 to avoid naming issues such as you described from continuing to occur.

https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...

In the OP's case it was done for deflection of blame rather than trying to track where the mutations are first noted.

You might have noticed there's some stuff in the news about hate crimes against asians -- there's a direct correlation there.

You may have also noticed that one of the most active stories on HN right now is 'How U.S. media lost the trust of the public'.

You do realize the rise in attacks on Asian Americans are not simply anecdotes from the media but shows up in the statistics and police reports?

Let’s stay on topic. The truth is that many people were reluctant to even consider the lab theory because it might look anti-Chinese at a time when Trump was blatantly attacking them and blaming them for the virus with no evidence. The point is that politics led to censorship that made it difficult to consider all possibilities.

It is sad that so many people would rather compromise their integrity rather than agree with Trump.

The mere mention of the word Trump, and any sort of nuanced, pro/con conversation is lost. It becomes an emotional response. A sad state of public discourse.

He should’ve called it the CCP Virus. I actually like where he was going (let’s be real, China’s secrecy let it spread more widely), but another Trump fail.

ZH singled out an individual and made statements that could subject him to harassment. That's not merely a case of having the wrong suspicions about globally significant events.

>made statements that could subject him to harassment

Not sure what said statements were, but as described, that is not at all a reason to ban someone. On the internet, legitimate criticism very frequently leads to harassment. That is not at all the fault of the critic, and as long as they didn't intend to cause harassment, it's no reason to ban them.

Perhaps some details will clarify things. ZeroHedge published and publicized an article "Is This Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?" with the face, address, and phone number of an individual -- along with an invitition for readers to pay him a "visit".