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The corporate media is good at memory holing things, but here's a compilation of them calling it the "Wuhan Coronavirus", "Chinese Coronavirus" and "China's Coronavirus":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g

Bonus complication of when "the flu is worse" was the narrative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVDPVBZF2Xg

- Link A: The clips are a compilation of COVID19 being referred to as the "Wuhan Coronavirus" and "China Coronavirus" in Q1 2020. I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from it, is the implication that The US Media was hypercritical because people criticized the US president for repeatedly saying it xenophobically, months later?

- Link B: The clips are a compilation of health experts on MSNBC/CNN in January 2020, when the outbreak was confined to China, telling people they didn't need to worry yet.

I thought we'd emerge from this with an understanding of how quickly things move and operating under uncertainty a la Taleb, but in the current American context, it appears it turned into another reason to triple down on They'ing.

> The clips are a compilation of health experts in January 2020

Did you watch the video? Christiane Amanpour is not a health expert.

The media joined the outrage mob only when the wrong people started calling it such. That's more evidence of the early politicization driven by the same media.

The argument as described seems weak: "Combination of words $X said on Any News Outlet at any time mean its impossible for anyone to ever criticize $X being said by anyone else in any context at any time after. If it happens, Politicized Media."

I wonder if there's a bit more nuanced way to make this argument, I'm amenable to it, but...it reads more as American culture war than a discussion

> I wonder if there's a bit more nuanced way to make this argument, I'm amenable to it, but...it reads more as American culture war than a discussion

That's a fair critique, but I'm inclined to leave a more nuanced argument in someone else's hands. I'll just say I've long suspected massive media collusion and I found the media's almost overnight religious conversion on speech that identified the source of the virus to be jarring and suspiciously in sync.

There are dozens of egregious examples of the media adopting certain language or using certain terms in a sudden, widespread manner. A few examples you can find on Youtube include "power through", "beginning of the end", "walls closing in", etc.

I do think the media monoculture is partially to blame, but I don't that accounts for all of it.

I think it occurs someone criticizes a political opponent for using a word or phrase which has been commonplace until that time, though some may have considered it offensive.

Immediately, that usage is widely decried as horribly offensive, and even groups that routinely used it pile on to join the attack:

  "When (my opponent) said X today, it shows they are horrible and intend terrible things, whereas my use of it yesterday/last year (or in the future!) was completely innocent."

The direction of the politicization will remain in dispute:

  Did my opponent politicize it by using language known to be offensive, as a callout to their constituency?  

  Or did I politicize it by criticizing them, as a callout to my constituency?  

  Or do they politicize it by continuing to use it afterward?

It was first called the Wuhan Virus by mass media and researchers, even in China. That naming choice was fairly ordinary, similar to Spanish Flu, West Nile Virus, or Crimean–Congo fever. The "China virus" term became problematic once it was politicized in a criminally dumb way by the Trump government - back when they claimed it's not dangerous at all and totally under control in the US.

Insisting on a more neutral name was helpful for distinguishing reliable information from nonsense. But in my opinion the name Sars-Cov-2 was unhelpful in the long run because people just ended up calling it Covid or Coronavirus instead. Wuhan virus would have been a better naming choice, and it was called like that inside China at the beginning. The politicization of the health crisis (instead of showing solidarity first) was the big issue. Worse, it's still ongoing.

If totally neutral names are so important, maybe virologists should start thinking about naming schemes like meteorologists use, e.g. using first names.

I also recall mass confusion about what constitutes “man-made”. That could mean anything from a natural-origin virus released accidentally from a lab that was legitimately studying it, to an artificial-origin virus deliberately released from a lab for malign purposes.

(As well as the even milder variant of “natural-origin virus that didn’t leak from a lab, but which humans encountered as a result of sample-gathering for research”)

>In my recollection, the very first "politicization" I heard of Covid's origins were politicians insisting that the virus was man-made.

I'd like to see some evidence that politicians insisted it was man-made instead of trusting your recollection. If the virus had lab origins in a lab specifically performing "gain of function" research, that's quite a coincidence that might even suggest those politicians were correct (although I would concede it may have certainly been irresponsible).

Additionally, I expect polemics and politicization from politicians. It is their nature. But I'm not supposed to get it from the media, from the CDC, from the technocrats, and from the "fact checkers". But their rhetoric was political and their actions to shut down and shout down wrongthink was wrong (and now can be seen as having specious justification).

> I don't remember any member of the media establishment calling it the China virus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g

Another commenter already explained this, but these types of videos that are deliberately designed to obfuscate what actually happened are bullshit.

Yes, the media called it the "Wuhan coronavirus" early on before it was an actual pandemic because the virus primarily only existed in Wuhan at that point. Furthermore, the now well-known name of Covid-19 was not as prevalent then, and your average listener would understand "coronavirus" more than a new technical name at that point.

This is very different than, after the pandemic had already been widespread, specifically crossing out "Coronavirus" to call it "Chinese virus", as Trump did.

Look, there are plenty of things that the media at large deservedly gets criticized for, but trying to pretend calling it the Wuhan coronavirus early on in the pandemic is the same thing as specifically emphasizing it as "the Chinese virus" 6 months later is just lying.

> Look, there are plenty of things that the media at large deservedly gets criticized for, but trying to pretend calling it the Wuhan coronavirus early on in the pandemic is the same thing as specifically emphasizing it as "the Chinese virus" 6 months later is just lying.

Your argument explicitly depends on the context and it depends on the criticism. The context wasn't "6 months later". It was days later. And the criticism was that it is racist. That it is xenophobic. That it is intended to humiliate and threaten people of Chinese descent.

A much more plausible explanation would have been that Trump and his insistence on calling it the "China virus" was an attempt to deflect any political blame for his administration's policies to try and contain the virus. A more plausible explanation was that Trump was being unnecessarily coarse. Or unnecessarily provocative. But no, he was accused of racism and xenophobia.

But even before the phrasing of "China virus" was a thing, Trump was criticized for shutting down travel from China as being racist. In hindsight it turns out to have been a very shrewd, life-saving move. But instead of giving credit where credit's due and recognizing the wisdom of shutting down travel, suddenly the phrasing was racist and xenophobic. The accusations were the same, but the goalposts were moved. That the same people (the media) lobbing the accusations of racism and xenophobia were only days earlier using the same language is clear hypocrisy.

Since racism is wrongthink and wrongthink doesn't merit being discredited, it's easy to see why it's thrown around so casually. It requires no justification and is a cheap way to generate outrage. And that makes it a useful political tool.

We now know that many of these same people (the media along with their cohorts in government and the socials) shut down reasonable discussion regarding the origins of the virus while simultaneously using accusations of racism and xenophobia. And that's potentially scandalous and should be deeply embarrassing.