Far-left Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) claimed on Thursday that “racism” from the coronavirus was responsible for people not eating at Chinese restaurants.
“You know, since the beginning of the COVID19 outbreak we have seen not only the spreading of the virus but also a rapid spreading of racism and xenophobia,” Pressley said. “We witnessed it at the highest levels, in fact that the Republican Party fanning irresponsibly these flames. Um, one colleague tweeted that ‘everything you need to know about the Chinese coronavirus.’”
“My district is home to nearly 32 percent foreign born residents, with more than a quarter immigrating from Asia,” Pressley continued, “This painful rhetoric has consequences, restaurants across Boston’s China town have seen up to an 80 percent drop in business and I believe that this has everything to do with the rapid spread of misinformation and paranoia. It is critical that we stand against these inciteful messages and assuage fear in our communities and we do that by dispelling untruths and misinformation. We can only do that by sharing the facts.”
WATCH:
.@RepPressley blames "racist" Americans for drop in business at restaurants in Chinatown:
"Since the beginning of the covid-19 outbreak, we’ve seen not only the spreading of the virus but also a rapid spreading of racism and xenophobia." pic.twitter.com/RvC1mMxHHK
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 12, 2020
Pressley’s remarks mirror comments from socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) this week who claimed that people were not eating at Asian restaurants because they were racist.
“Honestly, it sounds almost so silly to say, but there’s a lot of restaurants that are feeling the pain of racism,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an Instagram Live video. “Where people are literally not patroning Chinese restaurants, uh, they’re not patroning Asian restaurants because of just straight up racism around the coronavirus.”
Democrats and left-wing media have falsely claimed over the last several days that it is racist for people to refer to the coronavirus by any name that indicates that it came from China.
The American Council on Science and Health reported:
Historically, microbiologists named new diseases after locations, animals or people. To this day, flu strains are named after the city in which they were first isolated.
…
There’s another problem with accusing the name “Wuhan virus” of being racist. All influenza strains are named after the location in which they were first isolated.
This isn’t done because of racism. It’s done because it helps epidemiologists track the viruses. Once again, things could get awfully confusing if influenza strains were named “Flu #3296” and “Flu #9114.”
As usual, America’s pathological obsession with racism misfires again.
As The Daily Wire reported earlier this week, numerous diseases have been named after their place of origin.
“In 1968, 150 students at Bronson Elementary School in Norwalk, Ohio, became very sick with vomiting and diarrhea. It took researchers four years and many stool samples to determine that the culprit was what at the time was called, alternately, ‘winter sickness,’ ‘winter vomiting bug,’ or stomach flu,” Stat reported. “Once investigators isolated and identified the virus that caused the outbreak of Norwalk, the city’s name became the virus’s name. As similar viruses sickened others in subsequent years, doctors began using the norovirus as an umbrella term for the Norwalk virus and its cousins.”
Other examples include:
- Guinea Worm; named after the Guinea coast of West Africa.
- West Nile Virus; named after the river in Africa.
- Ross River Fever; named after a river in Australia.
- MERS; stands for Middle East respiratory syndrome.
- Ebola; named for a river in Africa.
- Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever; named after Omsk, Russia.
- Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, named after a mountain range in the U.S.
- Lyme Disease; named after a town in Connecticut.