Bill Maher slapped down objections to using “China virus” or “Chinese virus” as monikers for the coronavirus, dismissing those protests as blinkered politically correct thinking by pointing out the long history of scientists naming viral strains after their origins

During his “New Rule” segment of a panel-less and audience-free version of Real Time, Maher brushed off the claims that attaching “China” to the description of the virus constitutes racism.

“It’s not racist to point out it’s batshit crazy to eat bats,” he snarked, alluding to the suspicion that COVID-19 was first transmitted to humans by handling or consuming infected bat meat bought at a so-called wet market near Wuhan.

“So when someone says, ‘What if people hear ‘Chinese virus and blame China?’ The answer is ‘We should blame China.’ Not Chinese-Americans; but we can’t stop telling the truth because racists get the wrong idea. There are always going to be idiots out there who want to indulge their prejudices, But this is an emergency, don’t we have bigger tainted fish to fry?”

“We can’t afford the luxury anymore of non-judginess toward a country with habits that kill millions of people everywhere,” Maher went on, noting that the bird flu, Hong Kong flu, Asian flu, and SARS all originated in China. “Viruses come from China like shortstops come from the Dominican Republic.”

Maher then closed by lustily urging the Chinese dictatorship that killed thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square and mercilessly enforced a “one-child rule” for decades under penalty of forced sterilization to clamp down on the country’s wet markets as public health measure.

“China can do this,” Maher insisted. “They need to use that iron fist and pound it down like the rest of the world depends on it, because it kinda does.”

Watch the video above, via HBO.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]