Despite the fact that the Novel Coronavirus, which has descended as a global catastrophe, originated from Wuhan in China, the Chinese media, international ‘liberals’ and many organisations across the world have been trying to peddle victimhood, claiming that calling the pandemic a Chinese disease and terms like Chinese virus and Wuhan virus is ‘racism’ and ‘bias’.
One such woke journalist, Niha Masih, working as the Indian correspondent for the international media outlet, The Washington Post, today took to Twitter to denounce India for tweeting on “#coronavirus as #ChineseVirus19”. Niha called it a nasty and racist attempt to defame China.
The visibly irked journalist could not control her emotions and merely a couple of minutes after the first tweet she once tweeted that she is shocked to see even India Today using this racist hashtag.
Well, Twitter can be really harsh on people sometimes. An alert Twitter user Harsh Gupta was quick to call out the journalist for her double standards. Sharing a snapshot of The Washington Post’s report where it referred to the Coronavirus as ‘Chinese virus’, Gupta asked Niha Masih to “resign from WaPo”.
The Washington Post, in one of its report dated January 27, 2020, titled: “Chinese coronavirus infections, death toll soar as fifth case is confirmed in U.S.”, had itself called the Novel Coronavirus a ‘Chinese Virus’. It’s funny how one of its own journalists had now taken to Twitter to virtue signal on racism and Chinese virus.
Well, Niha Masih will be delighted to know that this is not the only instance the American daily newspaper, which she is associated with, has referred to the Novel Coronavirus as the ‘Chinese coronavirus’ or ‘China virus’, but they have used the term multiple times. In another article dated January 22, 2020, titled: “First U.S. case of potentially deadly Chinese coronavirus confirmed in Washington state.” While talking about the first case in the US to be tested positive of the coronavirus, The Washington Post called it the “potentially deadly Chinese coronavirus”.
In yet another article published on 29th January, Washington Post had used the headline “China coronavirus: Party scrambles to avert a Chernobyl moment”, but later they edited the headline and removed the term ‘China coronavirus’.
It is well known now that the coronavirus infection had started and spread from Wuhan in China as early as November 2019, till January 14. A tweet by WHO, that had gone viral on social media, also revealed how China has been misleading the world about the pandemic.
The negligence and cover-up of Chinese authorities have pushed the world to battle a pandemic that has claimed thousands of lives and impacted global economies heavily. But China is ‘offended’ at the disease being called ‘Chinese’. And now this seems to be rubbing off on many woke ‘liberals’ and organisations across the world. Moreover, several other diseases are already named after places, like Japanese Influenza, Spanish Flu, German Measles etc, but only when a virus is named after China or Wuhan, China feels offended.