Corona-chan

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About

Corona-chan, also known as Wuhan-chan, is an anime-style anthropomorphic representation of the Novel Coronavirus the outbreak of which occurred in the Wuhan province of China in late 2019 and early 2020. The character is usually depicted as a young woman in a red qipao dress holding a bottle of Corona beer.

Origin

On January 17th, 2020, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user coined the catchphrase "Corona-chan" in a /pol/ board thread, with more users using the phrase to refer to the Wuhan province Novel Coronavirus in the following days.^[2]^[3]

On January 21st, 2020, an anonymous 4chan^[4] user posted a drawing of a young Asian woman dressed in a red qipao dress, holding a Chinese flag and a bottle of Corona beer in her hands, to /pol/ board (post and image shown below, left and right). The thread accumulated over 300 replies.

In the same thread, another 4chan^[5] user posted an alternative version of the drawing done using more vibrant colors (shown below, left). In the following hours, more anonymous users posted their versions of the character in the thread (shown below, center and right).^[6]^[7]

Spread

Starting on January 21st, 2020, the character received significant spread on 4chan; for example, the original artwork was posted 26 times on /pol/^[8] in two days, with the "enhanced" version posted 29 times on the board^[9] in the same period. In multiple posts, catchphrases "Good luck, Corona-chan!" and "I love you, Corona-chan!" have been used, with the posters wishing the virus to succeed in eliminating humanity (first known post shown below, bottom).^[10]

In the following days, the character received spread outside of 4chan, with the artworks being posted to Twitter^[11] and other websites. On January 22nd, YouTuber^[12] MR. OBVIOUS uploaded a video about the character which accumulated over 22,700 views within 24 hours.

Ebola-chan

Ebola-chan is a female anime character designed as an anthropomorphic representation of the Ebola virus. The character was created on 4chan in response to growing concerns regarding the West African Ebola outbreak in the summer of 2014.