U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley set off a round of criticism for his Wednesday morning tweet asking why China would be upset if people call the novel coronavirus the “Chinese virus.”

“I don’t understand why China gets upset bc we refer to the virus that originated there the “Chinese virus” Spain never got upset when we referred to the Spanish flu in 1918&1919,” Grassley tweeted.

His critics on social media told Iowa's senior senator that the term has contributed to racism towards Asian Americans.

Grassley spokesperson Michael Zona said Wednesday that China has been "spreading false propaganda and absurd conspiracy theories blaming the U.S. military for the coronavirus."

"China is attempting to shield itself from criticism for covering up the gravity of the coronavirus and silencing whistleblowers who tried to warn the world. Despite what the communist Chinese government may want, there’s no hiding that the coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China," Zona said in a statement. "Sen. Grassley has been advocating for increased transparency on China's part, and just yesterday criticized the Chinese Communist government’s decision to expel U.S. journalists."

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President Donald Trump has used the terms “China virus” and “Chinese virus” to refer to the coronavirus and defended the language, saying he doesn’t believe it creates a stigma.

COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, was first linked to an outbreak in Wuhan, China, but has since spread around the world. The World Health Organization has declared the virus a pandemic, meaning a disease that has spread worldwide.

Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, replied to Grassley’s tweet, saying it “encourages conspiracy theories and increases racism toward Asian-Americans.”

“Maybe 1918 should not be your benchmark for racial relations,” Moynihan also tweeted.

Walter Shaub, a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, replied to Grassley on Twitter to say, “Because it’s fueling racism toward on (sic) Asians. Not in China. Here! Our fellow Americans. That’s who.”

Other replies included stories of racism against Asian Americans because of the coronavirus, like a tweet by CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang on Tuesday. Jiang wrote, “This morning a White House official referred to #Coronavirus as the ‘Kung-Flu’ to my face. Makes me wonder what they’re calling it behind my back.”

Asked about Grassley’s tweet on a call with reporters on Wednesday, Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst said the focus needs to be not on what to call the virus but on protecting Iowa families, businesses and people that are going to be impacted by the outbreak.

"I don’t want to call it one thing or another. It’s the coronavirus. We’re focused on COVID-19, so we can just call it that. This is important, folks. We need to focus not on what do we call this. We know what we call it. It’s coronavirus. And we need to focus on the very human element of this virus and the fact that it is affecting so many Iowans and Iowa communities, our small businesses right now,” Ernst said.

The 1918 flu pandemic that Grassley referred to in his tweet is unlikely to have originated in Spain, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention websitesays “there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated.”

That pandemic is estimated to have caused at least 50 million deaths worldwide, including about 675,000 in the United States.

Historians have noted that Spain, which was neutral during World War I, was free to report on the outbreak without the wartime censorship that occurred in other countries, which may have led to the nickname.

The United States has been suggested as one possible source of the pandemic. The first known case in the country was reported at a military base in Kansas on March 11, 1918.

In an official op-ed that ran on the Register's website Tuesday, Grassley used the term “coronavirus outbreak” rather than “Chinese virus.” In the op-ed, he also referred to “the 1918 outbreak” and “the 1918 pandemic” instead of calling it the Spanish flu.

Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.

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