Bill Maher Says Coronavirus Should Be Called the ‘Chinese Virus': ‘We Should Blame China’

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“Scientists, who are generally pretty liberal, have been naming diseases after the places they came from for a very long time,” Maher said in the segment, delivered like the rest of the episode from his house. “Zika is from the Zika Forest. Ebola from the Ebola River. Hantavirus, the Hantan River.There’s the West Nile Virus and Guinea worm and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and of course the Spanish flu.”

(Sidenote: The 1918-1920 influenza pandemic didn’t actually originate in Spain. But Britain, Germany, France, the U.S. and other nations had imposed severe media censorship during World War I and suppressed information about the illness. Meanwhile in Spain, which didn’t participate in the war, media was free to report on the devastating plague, hence the association. Researchers believe the most likely points of origin are either battlefields in Europe during the war, or Kansas in the United States. Researchers have also suggested possible origins in China.)

“MERS stands for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome,” Maher continued. “It’s plastered all over airports and no one blogs about it. So, why should China get a pass? Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted, ‘The virus is not constrained by country or race. Be just as stupid to call it the Milan Virus.'”

“No, that would be way stupider because it didn’t come from Milan,” said Maher. “And if it did, I guarantee we’d be calling it the Milan Virus. Jesus f—ing Christ. Can’t we even have a pandemic without getting offended? When they named Lyme disease after a town in Connecticut the locals didn’t get all ticked off.”

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