Chikungunya is a virus first identified in 1952 in what is now Tanzania, carried by mosquitoes, long since a globetrotter.

It’s been through India, the Caribbean, Italy, the Americas — no passport checks, no visa stamps. In scientific literature, it has never belonged to any single country.

But in News Corp’s Australia, it suddenly becomes the “China virus". A casual reader might think Beijing cooked it up last week with soy sauce.

Across the Daily Telegraph and its sister outlets, the label wasn’t just used – it was driven like a campaign:

Facebook headline: “China virus risk to Aussies explained” – lead: “A mosquito-borne virus sweeping through southern China has now reached Taiwan, but Australia…”

News site headline: “Expert’s warning as China virus spreads” – sub-heading: “An Australian doctor has issued a grim warning about China as the country launches a COVID-like crackdown on a major virus outbreak.…”

Paywall teaser: “Chikungunya virus spreads to new country: What Aussies must know” – but with clickable link text reading “China’s new virus.”

This doesn’t look like an isolated headline written in a rush. The phrasing was replicated across social media, email blasts, and article leads – “China virus” was the first thing readers saw, the first phrase they repeated, the one that lingered.

And it’s not just News Corp. Channel 7’s Sunrise ran with: “China’s new virus: Cases of China’s Chikungunya virus soar past 10,000, as Taiwan records its first case…”

Apparently, some of our media don’t care whether the science is right, whether Chinese Australians are collateral damage, or whether we’ve learned anything from the last pandemic.

Why it fails science – and common sense

Chikungunya is not new.

It’s roots? Not China – its name, “that which bends up”, hails from a language far from Beijing, first surfacing decades ago in East Africa. Since then, it has spread far and wide, sometimes hitting Europe harder than Asia. China is merely the latest place it’s shown up.

The World Health Organisation moved years ago to stop naming diseases after locations, precisely because it fuels stigma.

Health agencies in Australia follow that rule without fuss. News Corp and Sunrise ignored it without explanation.

The only plausible reason? It couldn’t be that attaching “China” to “virus” makes a better hook. It couldn’t be that some of our media don’t care whether it turns 1.5 million Chinese Australians — citizens, permanent residents together with international students, skilled workers — into collateral damage.

Any journalist with a basic conscience and a working moral compass would never do that.

But… surely?

The cost, spelled out in human terms

Picture a Chinese-Australian couple in Sydney, who already spent 2020 fielding slurs and side-eyes from strangers, now hearing the whispers start again in the supermarket queue. Picture a student from Shanghai opening her phone to find “virus carrier” comments under a photo her friends posted.

These aren’t imaginative flourishes. We’ve seen them before.

In the COVID years, “China virus” appeared in headlines even when the story wasn’t about China. Asian-Australian homes and businesses were vandalised. People were spat on. Children were taunted in classrooms.

Certain media’s headlines didn’t just report that atmosphere – they built it, word by word.

When a newsroom repeatedly drives a term like “China virus,” it’s not just bending the facts. It’s bending the public mood, in ways that are hard to straighten.

The method is familiar now: nationality in the headline, science buried deep. Over time, the label becomes the story, and the actual facts — where it came from, how it spreads, how to prevent it — fade into the background.

There’s an easy fix: call it what it is.

Lead with the science: symptoms, transmission, prevention. Focus on the pathogen, not the passport. ABC and SBS manage it. So do Reuters and the BBC. But you can’t do that if your newsroom’s health coverage is being used as a proxy battlefield for foreign policy.

The true cure

Chikungunya will pass. Mosquitoes die with the season, vaccines are developed, treatments improve. But the virus that lingers — the one with no off-season — is the reflex to frame a health story through a lens of bias and Sinophobia. It mutates easily: today it’s a mosquito-borne disease, yesterday it was COVID, tomorrow it’ll be something else.

This isn’t about one headline, or even one newsroom. It’s about a mindset that trades accuracy for a cheap hit, knowing full well the collateral damage lands on neighbours, colleagues, classmates. It’s a habit that leaves scars long after the pathogen itself has gone.

You don’t fight this kind of outbreak with lab tests and vaccines.

You fight it with editorial discipline, cultural literacy, and the courage to put accuracy above outrage.

Otherwise, the real infection isn’t out there in the tropics – it’s right here, in how we choose to tell the story.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.