As panic, concern and anger emerge among the spread of COVID-19, there is growing tension on how to refer to the virus. 

Ryan Hurley, Iowa State College Republicans president and sophomore in pre-business, was elected as Inter-Residence Hall Association Residence senator and sent Student Government executives an email where he referred to COVID-19 as the “China Virus.”

“When we get back to school next semester after this China Virus Outbreak, will we still be having our inaugural dinner? I will be inviting Mr. Andrew Grant,” Hurley wrote in the email. 

Student Body President Morgan Fritz, Student Body Vice President Jacob Schrader and Acting Chief of Staff Kaitlyn Roling released a statement regarding Hurley’s reference to COVID-19.

“When Senator Hurley referred to the coronavirus as ‘China Virus,’ Vice President Schrader immediately sent a response that included the correct name for the disease,” the Student Government executives said in a statement. “In all Student Government correspondence, we have made it a point to use the proper term, ‘COVID-19.’ In the future, we would like to stress that all members of Student Government should continue using the term ‘COVID-19’ to refer to the virus spreading across our nation and world. We also ask every student at Iowa State to be careful with their words and refer to the virus by its actual name. 

Above all, we hope that all Cyclones are staying safe and healthy during these times. We also want to stress the importance of social distancing and following government guidelines. If students have questions about COVID-19 they should visit the CDC coronavirus webpage, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus, or the Iowa Department of Public Health webpage, https://idph.iowa.gov/emerging-health-issues/novel-coronavirus.” 

Hurley declined to comment on the email. 

Mid-March, President Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus” when he tweeted his support toward the airline industries. 

“When you’re talking about something that is medical then I feel like you should have more a clinical name and COVID-19 is that,” said Sehba Faheem, president of Iowa State College Democrats and senior in biological systems engineering. “Whereas China Virus, the Chinese Virus — both of those have some presumption in it.” 

The tweet sparked a debate within the nation on how to refer to COVID-19. 

“I personally refer to COVID-19 as the China Virus and I think as a country it’s fair to do so in the sense of we’re recognizing who’s to blame, and that’s the Chinese government,” said Charles Klapatauskas, president of Young Americans for Freedom and junior in mechanical engineering. “It’s not to say that it originates from Chinese people because I think that in itself is racist and vile.” 

When COVID-19 emerged, patients in Wuhan, China, were linked to large seafood and live animal markets, which suggested an animal-to-person spread, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), following the outbreak a growing number of patients reportedly did not have exposure to animal markets, indicating person-to-person spread. 

COVID-19, caused by a coronavirus, which is common in people and animals including cattle, cats, bats and camels, according to the CDC, though it is rare animal coronaviruses can infect and spread between people. 

“It just creates such a massive impact and if it’s remembered as some that originated and was allowed to explode because of the failures of the Chinese government, I think that creates more awareness increases [and] prevented from happening in the future,” Klapatauskas said. “Where if it is called COVID-19, it’s kind of seen as just another virus that kind of exploded again. I think not calling it a Chinese [Virus] or the Kung Flu — all those kind of more derogatory terms calling it the China virus or something that ties it back to where it came from; the failure of the Chinese government. I think that helps hold them accountable and keep us remember it because there will be major things that come out of this, I mean we may enter a small recession, so it’s something we have to be mindful of.” 

Klapatauskas also said the term “Wuhan Virus” falls under the category of derogatory terms. 

Similar respiratory viruses such as MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV are beta coronaviruses and have their origin in bats, according to the CDC, and the sequences from U.S. patients are similar to the one that China initially posted, which suggests a single and recent emergence of the virus from an animal host. 

“Wet markets, those should be regulated more, and I think that we should try to put a little bit more pressure on the Chinese government to make sure these sorts of diseases don’t spread as easily,” Faheem said. “But at the same time, there are things we as a global power and other global powers need to be doing in order to monitor these global viruses so they don’t become the pandemics they are right now.” 

The person-to-person spread was reported outside of the province Hubei, where Wuhan is, and in countries outside China, including in the United States. There is an ongoing community spread, which means people have been infected and they don’t know where or how they were exposed to the virus. 

“I just want to create more awareness,” Klapatauskas said. “I think there’s no real way about getting around being derogatory except to hold them accountable and using your voice, don’t promote the people that are doing that and hold them accountable.” 

The day after Trump used the term “Chinese Virus” in a tweet, it increased to 130,000 uses, according to the Washington Post. The Washington Post released an article regarding recent research showing as COVID-19 increases, online racism toward Asians has also increased.

The key findings in the research documents an “acute” increase to the criticism and magnitude of ethnic hate. Asian conspiracy memes, found on Twitter and Reddit, have also grown during the pandemic, according to the research.

“I think that calling it the Chinese Virus is just an attempt to shift blame over and every time you say it’s a call back to ‘look what the Chinese have done — this is their fault, they did this,’ which is not true,” Faheem said. “It is not just China’s fault that it became a global pandemic.”