Abstract
On 12 March 2020, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao wrote on Twitter, ‘It might be [the] US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!’ In a brazen response, President Donald Trump described the virus responsible for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) as the ‘Chinese Virus’ (also termed ‘Chinese coronavirus’ and ‘Wuhan virus’ by his senior officials), implying that it originated in China where the first COVID‐19 cases were reported in late 2019 This tug‐of‐war is currently being played out in political communications, the media and even public discourse, with accusations of slow public health responses, misinformation, media suppression and conspiracy theories – as both countries politicise the origin and impact of the COVID‐19 virus, and blame each other for the pandemic
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