Yesterday, we were told that former President Trump bears some responsibility for the uptick in assaults on Asian-Americans because he occasionally referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” its place of discovery:
Anti-Asian hate crimes reported to police in the largest U.S. cities jumped nearly 150% in 2020, per the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
The center tracked a rise after Trump started calling COVID-19 the "China virus." https://t.co/bZygjiViaR
— Axios (@axios) March 17, 2021
But, you see, it’s fine to refer to a virus by its place of discovery when you’re a Dem. Here’s Mark Levine, NYC Councilmember and Chair of the Health Committee, labeling the different variants found in NYC right now by the place where they were first identified:
BREAKING: NYC Health Dept has released updated data on variants.
Portion of new cases caused by…
* B.1.526 (NYC): 45.1%
* B.1.1.7 (UK): 17.6%
* B.1.429/7 (CA): 2.4%In total 65.1% of new cases in most recent week are caused by variants, up from 52.4% in prior week.
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) March 17, 2021
Week-by-week variant trends in NYC below.
Full data here: https://t.co/3eY0tc6noj pic.twitter.com/sUO8KecYBi
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) March 17, 2021
A limited # of other variants have also been found in NYC, but do not yet appear to be spreading widely.
Cases identified so far…
* P.2 (Brazil): 11
* B.1.351 (S. Africa): 2— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) March 17, 2021
And Levine should know better:
"I think it's important that we name these new variants appropriately and we don't call these the South African or UK variant. We need to use the names [B.1.351, B.1.1.7], because we don't want to stigmatize where the variants have been identified," –@WHO's @mvankerkhove #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/xmCtY6l9vv
— Global Health Strategies (@GHS) January 5, 2021
Note: NYC doesn’t label the variants this way. Levine added the location data:
Or is he OK with this?
Using this style, it's OK to call it: COVID-19 (China) https://t.co/lLhLNptlX7
— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) March 18, 2021
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