Trump Once Again Calls Covid-19 Coronavirus The 'Kung Flu'

EDITORS' PICK | 41,593 views | Jun 24, 2020, 12:20am EDT

Trump Once Again Calls Covid-19
Coronavirus The ‘Kung Flu’
                Bruce Y. Lee Senior Contributor
                Healthcare
                I am a writer, journalist, professor, systems modeler, computational and digital health expert,
                avocado-eater, and entrepreneur, not always in that order.

Students cheer as US President Donald Trump speaks during a Students for Trump event at the
Dream ... [+]   AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Ooops, he did it again.

On Tuesday, in a re-election campaign rally in a church, the Dream City
Church, U.S. President Donald Trump once again used the phrase “Kung
Flu” when referring to the Covid-19 coronavirus. Yes, in a church. And listen
to the cheers that erupted when the 74-year-old President used the term in
his speech at, once again, a church, based in Phoenix, Arizona:

Foundation, the NIH, AHRQ, CDC, UNICEF, USAID and the Global Fund. I have authored
over 200 scienti c publications and three books. Follow me on Twitter (@bruce_y_lee)
but don’t ask me if I know martial arts. Read Less

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Aaron Rupar      @atrupar · Jun 23, 2020
           Trump once against refers to coronavirus with the racist
           "Kung Flu" moniker, prompting huge cheers from his
           Turning Point Action audience. He then expresses
           confusion about what the "19" in "Covid-19" stands for.

             1:32 348.4K views

           Renie57
           @renie_mc

  So the people cheering a racist term are all sitting
  in a Church. So Christian-like

Stay classy, Dream City Church crowd.

This was “Kung Flu” part two, in a church. The 27,038-day-old Trump had
used the same phrase just this past Saturday, during his campaign rally in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. This video from The Guardian showed exactly what the
3,862-week-old Trump said to the over 500 dozens of people that were
present:

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Trump calls coronavirus 'kung u' and says he s…
                                                     s…

Gee, if you are Asian American and grew up in the U.S. when’s the first time
you heard the phrase “Kung Flu” said to you? Pre-school? Elementary
school? Betcha it wasn’t in a friendly way like “Kung Flu, I love you.” Rather
it was probably more in a nasty way like “keep your dirty Kung Flu self away
from us.”

Using the phrase “Kung Flu” probably ain’t going to drum up the best of
memories among many Asian Americans. And it certainly won’t help with
the fact that Asian Americans have been facing coronavirus-related
discrimination and attacks even though they had little to do with the
pandemic, as I have covered previously for Forbes. It’s gotten so bad that
the #WashTheHate campaign was started. So much for last month being
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

So why did Trump use that phrase then? Well, during the Tulsa rally, he
claimed that Covid-19 is a disease that “without question has had more
names than any other disease in history.” Umm, if that were correct, then
how would it help to use yet another name that no real public health or
infectious disease expert is using? And why didn’t Trump use some other
example like:

B. W. Carlin
            @BaileyCarlin

  I have been informed by a relative who is a middle
  school teacher that students are now referring to
  coronavirus as the “boomer remover”
  1:00 PM · Mar 12, 2020

Yeah, maybe “boomer remover” wouldn’t have gotten quite the same cheer
in Tulsa.

Plus when it comes to unofficial names, plenty of diseases have had many
more than Covid-19. Take syphilis, for example. (Metaphorically, of course,
and not literally as you don’t want syphilis.) A Google search reveals that the
unofficial names for syphillis range from something like a television channel
(“syfy”) to something like sliding on a carpet (“Mississippi rug burn”). Will
Trump mention the “Mississippi rug burn” the next time he is campaigning
in that state?

So what’s the real reason Trump used the phrase? Well, during the White
House Press Briefing on Monday, different reporters asked White House
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly to explain why Trump used
the term. CBS News White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang led off the
queries by saying, “Last July, President Trump declared himself the least
racist person there is anywhere in the world. Why does he use racist phrases
like ‘kung flu?’” After all, using the word “kung flu” probably isn’t going to
help you on the official “least racist” world rankings or the racism Olympics.

Did McEnany provide a direct answer or did she do an Average Joe’s Gym
from the movie Dodge Ball and dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge? Well, you
can see for yourself in this video from The Guardian:

        Coronavirus: Kayleigh McEnany defends Trump'…
                                              Trump'…

To Jiang’s initial question, McEnany responded, “The president doesn’t,”
which is an interesting thing to say because the video of the Tulsa speech
kind of suggests that he did. In this case, “kind of suggests” means that it
showed him using the phrase.

After repeated questioning, McEnany did claim that Trump’s use of the
phrase “Kung Flu” was “linking it [the virus] to its place of origin.” That’s
interesting. Have studies suggested that the virus originated in a martial arts
studio? Did it come from the song “Kung” by Phish?

McEnany, who doesn’t appear to be Asian American, did not even
acknowledge that the use of “kung-flu” could be offensive to at least some
people. After all, plenty of people have said that it’s offensive such as, drum
roll please, these Asian Americans:

         Weijia Jiang    @weijia · Mar 17, 2020
         This morning a White House official referred to
         #Coronavirus as the “Kung-Flu” to my face. Makes me
         wonder what they’re calling it behind my back.

         Katie Phang
         @KatiePhang

  I am so sorry that you have to suffer from this kind
  of horrible racism when you are simply doing your
  job. Clearly, Trump has set the tone for this kind of
  crap.

And this Asian American:

         Andrew Yang
         @AndrewYang

  Trump calling COVID-19 the “Kung Flu” is stupid,
  racist and part of the reason he is losing this
  election in increasingly humiliating fashion. His
  material is no longer effective just self-degrading.
  10:32 PM · Jun 23, 2020

And even White House advisor Kelly Anne Conway, who is married to an
Asian American and did agree that use of such a term is “highly offensive” as
seen in this Now This video:

        Kellyanne Conway on Trump Calling COVID-19 '…
                                                   '…

Instead, McEnany used the opportunity to justify the use of the words
“Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus,” even though those terms also goes
counter to the “World Health Organization (WHO) Best Practices for the
Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases.” The WHO released these
guidelines in 2015 because using geographic locations or cultural or
population references in naming new diseases could “provoke a backlash
against members of particular religious or ethnic communities.” A backlash?
WHO? What? Could something like that actually happen?

To prevent such a backlash, you could always use the real names for the
disease and the virus. After all, Covid-19 is not that difficult to pronounce
like Snuffleupagus. Heck the word Covid has fewer syllables than the word
Ivanka. Just add the number 19 at the end because the virus first appeared
in 2019, which is the year before 2020, in case anyone in the crowd at the
Dream City Church was wondering.

So back to original question? Why has Trump now on two separate
occasions used a phrase that kids have used to bully Asian Americans, when
there are official names that are fairly easy to remember and pronounce,
when people have repeatedly asked why he is using the phrase?

Could it be to find someone to blame for the Covid-19 coronavirus? Could it
be to find someone to blame for the over 121K Covid-19 deaths that have
already occurred in the U.S., by far the most of any country? Could it be
looking for someone to blame for the economic hardships that have resulted
because the virus was not contained earlier in the U.S., which ended up
requiring more severe social distancing measures in the U.S. than in
countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Germany? Could it be to deflect
from the criticism of the handling of Covid-19 coronavirus response?

Finding someone else to blame is a strategy that you can use when you do
something wrong, you make a mistake, you have a really bad ooops
moment. It happened, for example, in the 1970’s when Japanese auto

manufacturers began surpassing American auto makers. Instead of taking a
hard look at why the Detroit Big Three auto companies were not developing
better management practices and cars to keep up with the times, many
Americans blamed the Japanese for the ensuing woes. And when any people
that “look Asian” are blamed, all Asian Americans (well, at least those of
East Asian and some of Southeast Asian descent) can end up suffering. As I
have written before for Forbes, people in the U.S. may not distinguish
between those in Asia and Asian Americans. Heck, as I described in an essay
for the Milken Institute’s Power of Ideas series, even if you were born and
grew up in the U.S. and have never ever been to China and have no real
roots in China, people may still tell you to “go back to China.”

Finding someone to blame and failing to distinguish among those of Asian
descent are why Vincent Chin was killed in 1982. Ironically this had
occurred on June 23, exactly 38 years before Trump’s Phoenix rally. Two
American auto workers took out their job situation frustrations on Chin, a
random Chinese American, rather than on their companies’ executives. They
beat Chin to death. Chin wasn’t even of Japanese descent, probably because
no one bothered paying attention to differences among different Asian
Americans. To add to the tragedy, this incident didn’t get the attention that
it deserved and the two perpetrators never served any jail time for the crime,
as this segment on Detroit Public TV showed:

        Asian Americans: From Vincent Chin to COVID-…
                                              COVID-…

That’s just one tragic example from a long history of Asian Americans
getting scapegoated.

Did the cheers at the rally following Trump’s utterance of “Kung Flu”
suggest that a scapegoat has successfully been found? If so, that’s bad news
all around, except maybe the virus. It’s bad for Asian Americans who have to
bear the brunt of hatred for mistakes that weren’t their fault. It’s bad for this
country because such prejudice may keep Asian American public health
experts, scientists, and others from helping this country deal with the
pandemic. It’s bad for this country because it distracts from the mistakes
that continue to be made in this country’s pandemic response and from
finding appropriate solutions. And all of those are much more than just
ooopses.

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        Bruce Y. Lee

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I am a writer, journalist, professor, systems modeler, computational and digital health
expert, avocado-eater, and entrepreneur, not always in that order. Currently, I am a
Professor of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York (CUNY)
School of Public Health, Executive Director of PHICOR (@PHICORteam), Professor By
Courtesy at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, and founder and CEO of
Symsilico. My previous positions include serving as Executive Director of the Global
Obesity Prevention Center (GOPC) at Johns Hopkins University, Associate Professor of
International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Associate
Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh, and
Senior Manager at Quintiles Transnational, working in biotechnology equity research at
Montgomery Securities, and co-founding a biotechnology/bioinformatics company. My
work has included developing computational approaches, models, and tools to help
health and healthcare decision makers in all continents (except for Antarctica) and has
been supported by a wide variety of sponsors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates