Why would Donald Trump and many of his acolytes want to blame Chinese people for creating COVID-19? Why make this claim where there is no evidence to support the claim and where the U.S. national intelligence director’s office said it had determined Covid-19 “was not manmade or genetically modified.” [1] I would suggest the following three reasons:
- Because Trump and Mike Pence are proudly ignorant of science [2]. . Relatedly, Trump has expressed skepticism about the use of vaccines. [2] Pence is hostile to the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection [3]. And see here [4].
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Due to their hostility to science, Trump and Pence are not likely to entertain the possibility that the coronavirus could have evolved naturally, despite the fact that viruses do evolve [5] and the fact that coronavirus did, in fact, evolve naturally. [6]
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Because Trump and Pence have established themselves as xenophobes, [7] they would be inclined to blame “outsiders,” i.e., the Chinese, for the coronavirus.
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