Fact: China Gave the World COVID-19

In 1999, my then-8-year-old son was diagnosed with Lyme Disease.

A round of antibiotics cured him, as it usually does when caught early in youngsters.

Lyme Disease is named for Lyme, Connecticut, a leafy New England town founded in 1667, where the disease originated. The name is not a racial slur against the people who live in Lyme. Neither is the term loaded with animosity toward the good people who live in that town of 2,406 souls.

I’ve never been to Lyme but would not hesitate to visit if I were invited there.

Looks like a lovely hamlet.

Same goes for other locales that have had the misfortune of being the epicenter of a disease.

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, for instance. West Nile virus. German measles. 

Bad illnesses. Pretty places. 

Which brings us - as you knew it would - to COVID-19, which many of us incorrectly call the “Coronavirus.” That’s too vague, I’ve been told. There are many other viruses in the corona family. In the beginning, we all called it the Wuhan Virus, the area where it originated. Others called it the Chinese Virus, which referred to the country where it first appeared.

Somehow, I guess because the people in China are a different race from those in Lyme and some Americans are always searching for racism, our overlords in the media decided that to attach Wuhan or Chinese to the name of the virus is racist.

Do Americans hate the people of Wuhan? No they don’t. Most of us were terrified for them as we watched images of their overcrowded hospitals, their exhausted doctors and nurses, their bodies on stretchers and the people being roughed up by police.

Yet the World Health Organization has now joined this game of political correctness - as if they have nothing better to do - demanding that everyone drop geographical references when discussing this pandemic. Yep, the feckless organization that licked the boots of China in the early weeks of the outbreak and merrily repeated the lies and dissembling of the communist government is lecturing US about our words.

Remember this, from January 14? The Who was slurping up and spreading false information from a government with no history of truth telling.

As if arresting whistleblowers and censoring the media while a pandemic brewed weren‘t bad enough, the Chinese government now bristles at the suggestion this is a Chinese virus.

Too bad.

In the words of David Harsanyi of the the National Review,  “I’m disinclined to curb my speech to placate Chinese propagandists.”

Frankly, I don’t care what we call it. Neither should the WHO. We have much bigger problems right now.

Yet in recent days, news outlets have decided that one of the most important concerns is making sure that we don’t offend the sensibilities of the Chinese government.

Right on cue at yesterday’s press briefing, ABC’s Cecilia Vega challenged the president on his language. 

Vega: "Why do you keep calling this the Chinese Virus?"

Trump: “It comes from China, that’s why…I want to be accurate…China tried to say at one point — maybe they stopped now — that it was caused by American soldiers. That can’t happen, it’s not going to happen, not as long as I’m president.”.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a reporter for a major news organization. A global pandemic is raging, Americans are frightened and confused and you get to ask a question of the leader of the Free World. Would you squander that opportunity by igniting a debate about word play? 

Of course you wouldn’t. You’re intelligent.

If I were Vega’s boss, I’d fire her. But chances are, she huddled with her editor before heading to the presser and they decided that she’d start a tinkling match with Donald Trump rather than ask a substantive question.

Is the president deliberately calling this the Chinese Virus? Yes he is. That’s his nature. Trump’s pugnacious and he’s sticking his thumb in the eye of the government responsible for our present misery.

These are not serious people. They are social provocateurs on a mission that has nothing to do with informing the public.

Before the media becomes indignant about language, perhaps it should check its own. Take a look at what a writer at The New York Times called the virus last month:

The press should be working hard to give Americans the information they need to get through this crisis. Instead they’re playing word games.