On one hand, I'm against political correctness, and I don't think "Chinese virus" is any more pejorative than "Chinese food". It's just a name reflecting origin.
...until the President makes it clear that it is indeed meant pejoratively, blaming China for it.
...until the President makes it clear that it is indeed meant pejoratively, blaming China for it.
Yes, the Chinese government had a coverup in December, but I don't see how that would've stopped the virus from ultimately spreading worldwide. Short of nuking Wuhan on early suspicion of the virus, it was going to spread.
Exponential growth means the difference between doing everything right vs. doing everything wrong means shifting things only by a week one direction or the other until you reach the same point.
Lots of people use "Chinese virus" no more pejoratively than "Chinese food", such as in this tweet. So I'm apt to defend them. The problem with Trump is that he seems to mean it pejoratively, as do his ardent followers.
I don't believe the Chinese wet markets are particularly to blame, as this tweet suggests. Zoonotic viruses are always a danger and can happen everywhere there's a high meat eating population. Even the largely vegetarian India has had outbreaks.
This tweet makes a good point: Trump's target is likely to the Chinese government and not the Chinese people or the country of China. Though, the counterargument is that his obviously pejorative message may be stoking hatred among his racist supporters.
Yet another example of "Chinese coronavirus" not meant pejoratively. I'm bookmarking it here mostly because I think their censors will get the title changed after people complain. 
BTW, from the papers I've read, the majority of the virus comes from bats, but there's this one sequence that's only found (so far) in pangolins.
nature.com/articles/d4158…
nature.com/articles/d4158…
