Here comes the censorship...I will not change this thread title to pacify the snowflake PC crowd...
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House passes resolution condemning anti-Asian discrimination relating to coronavirus
The House passed a resolution Thursday condemning "all forms of anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19" in a 243-164 vote.
The measure came amid Democratic lawmakers repeatedly blasting President Trump for referring to coronavirus as the "Chinese virus," alleging the rhetoric has led to an influx of discrimination against Asian Americans.
The measure - spearheaded by Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) - highlighted that the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have stated that connecting the name of a virus to the geographic location where it originated perpetuates a stigma.
Proponents of the resolution said it is necessary to combat bigotry as instances of harassment and violence against the Asian community have increased since the start of the pandemic.
(More on the link)
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As regards censorship, what legal force does this resolution have? The article cites Republican critics pointing out that it is non-binding. I am not sure what the US Congress can do about people associating the virus with Wuhan that would not be in breach of the First Amendment. It is fine in the case of this thread, because it was started and named at a time when it was most obviously an epidemic in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
The WHO's statements on the perpetuation of stigma brought about by connecting the name of a virus to its point of origin are claims only and are not facts. As has been pointed out in numerous places since the beginning of the pandemic, the sensitivities of the Chinese state have a large influence over what the WHO does and does not say. China also has a track record as the origin of many pandemic diseases and diseases of pandemic potential, in large part due to the agricultural and economic practices that have been promoted by its government.
How many people know that the Marburg virus is named after a city in Germany, that the Ebola virus is named after a tributary of the Congo River, or that norovirus is named after the town of Norwalk, Ohio? If there is any stigma conferred to countries or peoples because of these viruses, then it is not due to their names. Similarly, I doubt many people stupid enough to attack an ethnically Chinese or east Asian person because of coronavirus were aware before the start of this year that Wuhan is a city in China.
What these people probably do know is that the current pandemic disease arose in a city in China, and they may have learned that that city is named Wuhan. But in this case, this is truthful information that has been widely reported in all news media, and has nothing to do with the name given to the virus. Unfortunately, you cannot control what a stupid person does with information that they are given, and the only way to stop incidents of people being attacked for this sort of reason would be to make sure that they--and by extension
we--are not given any information at all, which is a price that even those who make claims like the above may not be willing to pay.