Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is blaming the spread of COVID-19 on the diet of Chinese. He is the latest Republican to point a finger at China following the lead of President Trump.
In an interview with The Hill, Cornyn said Chinese is a “culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that.”
‘These viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people and that’s why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, like MERS, the Swine flu, and now the coronavirus, so I think they have a fundamental problem,” he said.
He dismissed concerns that such talk has lead to a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans saying he’s not talking about Asians, he’s talking about Chinese.
According to USA Today, swine flu originated in the United States, not China. MERS originated from Jordan. The Washington Post pointed out that Cornyn seem to have forgotten about the rattlesnake roundups in Texas. Also none of the diseases he mentioned originated from dogs and snakes. The paper also says science does not support Cornyn’s claim that eating bat, snake or dog meat have contributed directly to the spread of coronavirus, SARS, MERS or swine flu.
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