When Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said Sunday he will self-quarantine for 14 days after he came into “extended” contact with a person who since has been hospitalized for the coronavirus, he set off a debate by referring to the disease as “Wuhan virus.”
Gosar called the disease COVID-19 in an official statement, but on his personal Twitter account wrote that he had “sustained contact” with someone who has since been hospitalized for “Wuhan Virus” — a phrase health officials say should not be used.
Gosar quickly came under fire and was condemned on social media.
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Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said in a tweet that Gosar’s use of “Wuhan virus” is “an example of the myopia that allowed it to spread,” adding the virus is “not constrained by country or race.” Sleeping Giants, a liberal social media activist organization, responded to the tweet saying, “Hope you’re okay, but perhaps while you’re quarantined, you will realize how astoundingly xenophobic it is to call it the Wuhan Virus.”
Many on social media, including NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue and NBC News’ David Gura, took the criticism one step further, saying Gosar’s reference was racist, as anti-Asian bias and xenophobia have been rising amid the outbreak.
Others, particularly figures in conservative media, defended Gosar, saying it is commonplace to refer to diseases by the place where they originated, citing Lyme, Connecticut, as the namesake of Lyme disease, and the Zika virus, named after the Zika forest of Uganda.
Gosar himself responded to the criticism on Twitter late Sunday, saying it is “just astoundingly ignorant to have all major media refer to it as #WuhanVirus for months but somehow, today, you’ve decided that’s #racist.”
“Ignore the snowflake Leftists who think everything is racist. It’s a virus. It doesn’t care about your race,” he wrote.
When the coronavirus first appeared, many people, including those in the media, referred to it as “Wuhan virus.” But in mid-February, the Asian American Journalists Association put out guidelines for reporting responsibly on the outbreak, and cautioned against saying “Wuhan virus.” The AAJA cited 2015 guidelines from the World Health Organization discouraging the naming of illnesses after geographic locations to avoid stigmatizing those who live there.
More recently, WHO said specifically not to refer to the disease at the “Wuhan virus,” adding that COVID-19 was deliberately chosen as a name for the virus to avoid stigmatization.
“It’s so painful to see the level of stigma we are observing,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video posted on social media. “Stigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than the virus itself, and let’s really underline that. Stigma is the most dangerous enemy.”
