Bill Maher’s Flaccid “Chinese Virus” Defense

An Empty Epitome of Intellectual Laziness

What’s in a Name?

As COVID-19, a specific strand of coronavirus, forces the world indoors, threatens prosperity, and steals human life, it has become fashionable among some to refer to the pathogen not by its scientific name, but instead as the “Chinese virus,” a nod to the virus’s origin in Wuhan, China.

Despite the fact that COVID-19 is a strain of naturally occurring viruses (SARS and MERS were also coronaviruses) and that using the term “Chinese virus” has unleashed a wave of anti-Asian-American sentiment, many — most notably Donald Trump — continue to use the name for nakedly self-serving purposes, preferring to stoke paranoia and hate, avoid accountability, and cover their own missteps by placing the blame on China or, more specifically, the Chinese.

Recently, Bill Maher rushed to the defense of the term “Chinese virus,” claiming that “a pandemic is no time for political correctness.” Maher went on to point out that when Lyme disease was named for the town of Lyme, Connecticut that “the locals didn’t get all ticked off.” (Maher loses more points for his poor use of the “ticked” pun). Maher finally ended his defense of “Chinese virus” by saying, “this isn’t about vilifying a culture. This is about facts.”

It’s interesting that Maher claims his defense is about “facts” when there are so few of them supporting it. His comparison to Lyme, CT is so feeble it fails to look like an apt analog even on the surface, much less when probed, and if Maher cares at all about facts, it is curious that he promotes unscientific rhetoric that obfuscates our understanding of the pathogen and makes seeking real solutions more difficult.

An Empty Analog

Let’s begin with Maher’s comparison between China and Lyme, CT. It doesn’t take a great deal of critical thinking to see how shallow this is, but just in case, here are the levels on which this analog fails to be an adequate comparison.

1. Lyme disease was and is not a global pandemic. Though it is spreading rapidly because ticks are thriving in a world affected by climate change, Lyme disease did not and cannot spread like wildfire, possibly killing millions. One disease, in a matter of months, has sent the entire world into social distancing mode, the other, nearly five decades after being identified, impacts portions, and only portions of the Northern hemisphere. According to the scholarly journal, Medscape, there are 30,000 new cases of Lyme disease reported annually in the United States. That means that, since its identification in 1975 — assuming there have been 30,000 new cases every year, unlikely given that Lyme has begun spreading faster recently due to climate change — Lyme disease has impacted roughly 1.5 million Americans. The nonprofit Lyme Disease Association, citing data from the CDC, records that 36 Americans died from complications related to Lyme disease between 2002–2007. I could, but don’t need to, keep going to show that the contrast between the two is beyond striking and obvious.
2. Lyme, Connecticut is a rural town whose population was just over 2,400 based on the 2010 census count. Like the difference between COVID-19 and Lyme disease, the differences between a tiny town of 2,400 and the world’s most populous and third largest nation should be obvious. One wonders how many people suffering from Lyme disease even know the origin of the illness’s name, certainly that point is lost on much of the country, let alone much of the world. While we ought not unfairly smear even a small town and its inhabitants, the potential taint associated with the term “Lyme disease” is infinitesimal compared with the potential associated with the term “Chinese virus.”
3. Not only is Lyme, CT tiny, its residents — again according to the 2010 census — are 96.5% white, meaning that even if they disperse around the nation carrying their non-transferable disease with them, they look just like the majority of Americans who are also the nation’s most privileged citizens. Consider that the entire state of Connecticut has 3.5 million residents while there are around 18 million Asian-Americans spread out across the nation. The potential for bigotry and hatred against the residents of Lyme because of their town’s association with an illness is almost nonexistent. Those residents don’t stand out in comparison to the majority of the body politic; there is no way to identify them as residents of Lyme, but it is quite easy to identify — or perhaps misidentify — Asian-Americans and associate them with China whether they live in New York, Nebraska, or Nevada.

All this leads to the obvious conclusion that there is no real comparison at all between Lyme disease and the “Chinese virus” when it comes to social repercussions and stigma attached (or in the case of Lyme disease not attached) to the two terms.

A Simple Craving for a Simple Mind

Unfortunately for Maher, it gets worse. Racist implications and the possibility for harm against Asian-Americans aside (if those concerns can truly be set aside, which they can’t), connecting the virus rhetorically to China lends itself to simplistic explanations and therefore non-solutions to the threat the virus presents.

It is true, of course, that it is a natural thing for humans to name things — good and bad — after places. There are no shortage of examples to prove this point. But it is also the case that such a tendency is based on the frailty of human observation which is no match for the thorough scientific explanations we seek in order to understand and solve our problems. Consider, for example, the appearance of syphilis in Europe. The first recorded syphilis outbreak occurred in the late 1480s when the French invaded Italy and captured Naples. Themselves blamed for the disease, the French took to calling it the Neapolitan disease, likely to deflect blame, but also because this is where the French army likely contracted it during their pillaging-filled occupation of the city.

The solutions that arise from such a shallow understanding are not based in “facts” as Maher claimed, they’re based in the same type of easy answers our brains crave, but which are rarely either easy or answers. Our rhetoric ought to match our understanding of the problem and inform our attempted solutions, but when we dumb down our words we dumb down our understanding and make finding the answers harder. There is a reason that scientists in every field use robust sets of terminology and nomenclature to describe the phenomenon they attempt to explain, and that reason is that the universe and thus our world are complex places that cannot be described in simple terms.

Conclusions

The only “fact” that connects COVID-19 to China is that the disease broke out there the way syphilis broke out in Naples or the 1918 “Spanish” flu broke out in Kansas. There is nothing inherently Chinese about the virus, no reasons other than simple-mindedness or bigotry to attach the nation’s name to the disease.

While it is fair to blame the Chinese Communist Party for how they handled the outbreak and their ongoing lies about its reach there — as well as for many other reasons unrelated to COVID-19 — imagining that the Chinese government, or worse, the Chinese people, are responsible for the virus’s appearance and spread are ignorant and hubristic. Even a better, more transparent response would not have prevented a strong enough disease from spreading. Humans are still at the mercy of pathogens, not the other way around, and so while the Chinese government should be held accountable for how it lied to the world and its own people, adding to everyone’s suffering, the “fact” is that conflating COVID-19 with China is myopic at best and bigoted at worst.

It is not a noble stand against political correctness to draw simplistic conclusions that put people’s well-being at risk, it’s an ignorant attempt to draw attention to oneself and make an ideological point, which — like many — is rooted in what one wants to believe, not what actually is.