[slg]

>It is interesting you say that because the first notice I saw of it starting to get politicized was people calling Trump racist for attempting to placing a travel ban from/to China,

Trump has a history of xenophobia. The China ban was viewed as a second Muslim ban. It also appeared to be disconnected from the facts at the time because it was neither a full ban and was only singling out China. So it was clearly going to be ineffective and unfairly stigmatize Chinese people. Considering all of this, it isn't surprising his critics called it racist.

Also now that we are still in a pandemic two years later, it should be obvious that Trump patting himself on the back for this China ban is at best foolish. It was never going to have much of an impact.

> and for using the phrase China virus, when there is a decent history of naming diseases from where they came from.

Just because there is a "decent history" of something happening doesn't mean we should continue it forever. It is known that this type of naming is often wrong (the Spanish Flu likely originated in Kansas) and can lead to unnecessary and unproductive stigmatization. There is already a history of intentionally not using the place of origin to avoid these problems (Ebola was consciousness not named after the village it was found so they used a more generalized area)

> I think in fact your link attests to that because it's not saying anything about COVID it is all about how Trump is being racist for using the word China flu.

Why do you think Trump would consistently use "China flu" other than for political reasons? Isn't it obvious so people blame China for it?

>Personally I can't stand the guy, but if you believe that the entire virus and COVID response was made entirely politicized by Donald Trump, I'd check your medication because you might just be taking crazy pills in that case as you stated at the beginning.

I didn't say he was the only person responsible. I said he was the one who initially politicized it. Once it is politicized, both sides will continue to perpetuate that polarization.

[yucky]

>The China ban was viewed as a second Muslim ban.

...which was also misrepresented in the media. They literally used the same countries the Obama Administration had put on their list with the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015.[1]

Also, the majority of countries on the list weren't Muslim, and the majority of Muslim countries weren't on the list.

[1] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/01/29/news-bull...

[slg]

The list of countries was less important the the universal nature of the Muslim ban. It was kind of the opposite of the China ban. When it comes to disease, we need to act decisively and universally with care not create loopholes that allow people to pass through. When we are talking about terrorism, banning an entire country doesn't make sense. There has to be some type of vetting for exceptions.

The Muslim ban included people who had already been living in the US for years. These are people who have lives, families, and jobs here. But if they happened to be outside the US when the ban went into effect, they couldn't reenter the country. If they already were in the country, they couldn't leave. They couldn't have their friends or family from back home visit them. There is no logic to a ban of that scale when it comes to preventing terrorism. That is the type of universal ban one creates to stop a pathogen. Except the China ban was full of holes and thousands of Chinese nationals continued to travel to the US. That isn't a plan based on science.

The motivations for both these moves was not rationale. Considering they both came from the same person, a person who has a long documented history of other bigoted actions, his critics connected them with the shared thread of xenophobia.

[yucky]

>There is no logic to a ban of that scale when it comes to preventing terrorism.

Sure there is, it was specifically related the inability of the countries on their list to demonstrate proper port/airport screening & security. The reason most Muslim countries weren't on the list is because most Muslim countries took security seriously enough. This is also why the non-Muslim countries that were on the list were on there.