Not at all surprising but still a trigger for outrage.
I think Cuomo was the first politician to take up the false rumor “It’s really the European virus” because huge numbers of Chinese moved to one region of Italy and took over all the local textile factories, with later people from China arriving daily taking with them the new Wuhan Virus to infect people of all races there.
China allowed and even promoted wide open travel by air of Chinese from the highest infected area of China, to the West. The surge made it a 2nd “hotspot” and got into the news. Deniers then said “so it’s really a sort of European thing.”
It came from Italy, because they don’t contribute to WHO like the Chinese.