Oh Sweetie, Save Your Outrage For Another Day

Weijia Jiang, a CBS News correspondent accused an unnamed White House official of calling COVID-19 the “Kung Flu” this morning in a tweet and Brandon Morse, Senior Editor at the website RedStates, lowered the boom on her:

Shouldn't it be a good thing that everyone is kung-flu fighting. That the task force is fast as lightning despite this virus being a little bit frightening? https://t.co/Cs1XN6UQoy

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) March 17, 2020

Morse’s reference may be lost to the younger set.  It comes from the single released in 1974 by Bus Stop during the chop-socky film craze that featured martial arts and kung fu films made in Hong Kong and Taiwan.  The song has been featured in films like Rush Hour 3, Beverly Hills Ninja and Kung Fu Panda 3.

It’s an indisputable fact that the Wuhan Virus, known to all of us as coronavirus or COVID-19, originated in Wuhan, China, the capital of Hubei Province. Every documentable piece of evidence demonstrates this to us.

China is doing exactly what you would expect a communist nation to do—manipulate public opinion via the woke leftism of a complicit Democrat Media Complex. The idea that we can’t label the virus by its place of origin without being xenophobic is laughable when, in fact, the media was calling it exactly that recently.

On March 8, the People’s Republic of China’s state-run rag Xinhua threatened to impose pharmaceutical export controls after which America would be “plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus.”

The article goes on to imply China would be justified in taking such a step. It would simply be retaliating against “unkind” U.S. measures taken after COVID-19’s emergence, such as restricting entry to the U.S. by Chinese and foreigners who had visited China.

Inside China, a raft of conspiracy stories has appeared online, including that the contagion was spread by the U.S. military. This bile was spewed by Lijian Zhao, Deputy Director General for Red China’s Foreign Ministry who tweeted, “It might be the US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data!  US owe us an explanation!”

Can any one of you imagine Germany, Japan or other responsible nations performing such a dark passive aggressive threat disguised as hurt feelings?

The pull quotes from one of my favorite columnists, Victor Davis Hanson, hits the nail on the head:

“In a reductionist sense, it is not surprising that a China, systematically lying to and cheating its trading partners, cannot be trusted to tell the world how a virus was born on its own soil, spread among its population, and hopped oceans into other nations.” 

“When the virus peters out and the panic fades, China may be permanently rebranded and recalibrated by the world at large. Its trading partners will trust it far less to honor any commitments or to abide by any international agreements. Supply chains will be diversified. Tourism will be reduced in fears another such coronavirus will follow SARS and COVID-19—and be hushed up. Countries that had particular close commercial and cultural ties with China—Iran, South Korea, and Italy—were hurt most during the epidemic by Chinese silence and duplicity.”

I guess I’ll have to own up to a willingness to stigmatize the culture a of people who dine in disgusting “wet markets” that feature bamboo rats, civets, pangolin, bats, snakes, wriggling grubworms, live snakes, turtle, cicadas, guinea pigs, badgers, hedgehogs, otters and even wolf cubs.  So yeah, people in this country will get a little rude when you start a pandemic that destroys people’s lives.