I agree and disagree in some sense. We've seen countless superspreader events in the US, and animal husbandry in the US entails concentration camp-like conditions, which are the perfect storm for disease development, rapid spread and zoonosis. Our agricultural practices end up getting spread to other markets so that they can remain competitive, which means those perfect storms are spread all over the planet.

However, there's no reason to pick on the Middle East in particular. Pilgrimages tend to get a lot of people from disparate areas to convene in a small centralized area at the same time. Research has shown pilgrimages in Europe were responsible for spreading leprosy in the Middle Ages, for example. Research has also shown that pilgrimages in modernity act also as disease vectors, although not with leprosy, with research studying the Hajj in particular, showing a 78x increase in the spread of meningitis[1]. Similarly, there's been research on COVID cases stemming from the Sturgis Rally in the US, suggesting that it was responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of the disease[2].

[1] https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...

[2] https://docs.iza.org/dp13670.pdf

It's one of the largest annual gatherings around with the kind of reach and population cross-section many large gatherings don't have. The infectious disease risks are both known and actively managed, you couldn't reasonably host the thing without that, eg:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24857703/

It's not just speculation, Saudis are also concerned https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693627/

“Wuhan is crowded and it could spread quickly there” isn’t racist.

“And that’s why I won’t go to SF’s Chinatown for lunch” was, as is the racist harassment detailed in your link.