Some right-wing media personalities are stigmatizing Chinese people by attempting to rebrand coronavirus with terms like “the Wuhan virus” or even “the yellow peril,” even though the World Health Organization named it COVID-19 in part specifically to avoid anti-Chinese stigmatization.

On March 6, Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth helped Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attempt to replace the name “coronavirus” with “the Wuhan virus,” referencing the Chinese city that first experienced a major outbreak. Hegseth defended the term as “an accurate way to depict where it's coming from” and suggested it demonstrates “the vulnerabilities the president has talked about for a long time in an interconnected world where we're dependent on a geopolitical adversary.” He also said we should be "rejecting the globalists who say that's the way it has to be.”