President Trump's mistake was associating a virus with a people instead of a government. Throwing around terminology like "the Chinese Virus" is obviously despicable. Particularly from a man who is president of millions of Chinese Americans and who is supposed to use his words to promote national serenity rather than foster ethnic hatred.
However, is it too late to nickname the virus "the PRC Virus" or something like that?
I don't know how much blame belongs to the People's Republic of China government for letting the virus get out of control and keeping the rest of the world in the dark for crucial months. But I am perfectly ok with creating terminology that fosters an appropriate amount of scorn for that oppressive, corrupt, inhumane, detestable, and hypocritical communist regime.
The PRC deserves nothing but our unabashed scorn. This government has been a source of tyranny within the nation of China and on the global stage for decades and the silence from our leaders is, all too often, deafening.
Have you forgotten Hong Kong? Re-education camps? Deliberately buying and manipulation other countries?
The PRC is a repugnant, authoritarian monstrosity and no part of you should be ashamed to call it what it is.
I'm not saying we should prod the PRC to the point of war. Nor am I saying we should chastise the PRC to the point of forgetting that we have plenty of our own national sins to address. We're not a perfect nation, but we at least work to correct our mistakes and expunge our worst national impulses. The PRC is actively doubling down on their worst, most inhuman practices. That's an important difference between our nation and theirs.
We should not equivocate when it comes to the PRC's myriad human rights violations. We should declare them for what they are. And we, as a nation, absolutely do not have to sit here and take ANYTHING from PRC delegates feebly deflecting back at us when we rightly call them out.