Racism and White nationalism are nothing new. They were a cornerstone of this nation long before President Trump came around — let’s not pretend they won’t linger long after he’s gone. Acceptance is waning and intolerance is growing, thanks in no small part to actions like this:

Screenshot by author, taken 3/22/2020

That is the pinned tweet from the man holding the highest public office in the United States of America. It’s a deliberate and calculated effort to ensure it’s seen by the most people possible, preventing it from being buried in the feed amongst whatever other ludicrous statements he makes.

We know what President Trump is doing when he intentionally re-labels coronavirus as the “Chinese Virus”.

His rhetoric reinforces our internalized biases and prejudices. Subtly, or in this case, blatantly, manipulating language aimed at the public is a powerful way to sway opinions and water the roots of ethnocentrism that already have a stronghold on the American psyche. Despite a population more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before, White supremacy remains par for the course.

I can’t say I’m surprised, but let’s set the record straight.

How are new viruses named?

In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued guidelines for naming new diseases. You can read that here if you’d like. Dr. Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General for Health Security at WHO, acknowledged how names like “swine flu” and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) are stigmatizing.

“This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected. We’ve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals. This can have serious consequences for peoples’ lives and livelihoods.”

The names of new diseases often stem from sources outside the science or health fields. Perhaps this is a good thing for pronunciation but it’s obviously not working well when it comes to combatting misinformation. The final ruling on a name for a new human disease is determined by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is managed by WHO.

If you guessed this process takes time, you’d be correct.

And in the meantime, scientifically unsound and inappropriate names have ample opportunity to spread like wildfire. They infiltrate the common vernacular and once that happens, it’s nearly impossible to forget.

Health professionals, journalists, and the media are encouraged to use common language and easily recognizable words. This can improve comprehension because there’s often a gap between health literacy and actual literacy, even among highly educated and affluent populations. Words matter, plain and simple. No one wants to feel patronized when a condescending physician talks down to them with some medical mumbo-jumbo that makes no sense. In much the same way, we implore attorneys to avoid “lawyer speak” and break it down in terms we can wrap our heads around.

Indulge me just for a moment and allow me to do just that.

Acknowledging how COVID-19 came from China is not racist

You can call a spade a spade without being an offensive jerk. No one is denying coronavirus originated in the Wuhan province of China. And we are allowed to individually and collectively work towards holding the Chinese government and our own political leaders accountable for egregious acts of censorship, blame-shifting, denial, and corruption.

But viruses know no borders. And they care nothing of the color of your skin or ethnic makeup.

Pandemics of the past illustrate how information blackouts or misrepresenting a disease makes it more difficult to contain. The “Spanish flu” for example, did not stem from Spain or any other Latin or Spanish-speaking nation. Instead, countries around the world fought to suppress information about it in a misguided effort to reduce panic and keep things quiet. Spain was neutral during WWI and issued reports about the pandemic in its infancy. As a result, people wrongly believed that’s where the 1918 influenza pandemic originated.

And we know how that turned out.

As of this writing, Italy has replaced China as the new epicenter for COVID-19, with nearly 800 deaths reported in a single 24-hour period. Yet there was no rush to boycott Italian restaurants, no surge in reports of harassment and discrimination.

It’s especially interesting to me as I consider the stark differences in worldviews. In American, we are staunchly individualistic. The mere mention of sacrificing our civil liberties to adhere to a national lockdown is enough to send us reeling. Yet one of the most successful case studies of COVID-19 so far is the South Korean response. They implemented testing, travel restrictions, and minimized opportunities for the virus to spread. They flattened the curve.

Was it because of their timely response, or a worldview more centered on collective cooperation? Eastern and Western attitudes are different in many ways but as this plays out in realtime, it seems the wrongful profiling of Asians, Asian-Americans, and immigrants is not helping contain coronavirus in the U.S. thus far.