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That said, we do still name individual species of ebola by where breakouts were discovered. Ebola Zaire & ebola Sudan were the first species identified after t
by favorited 7y ago
That said, we do still name individual species of ebola by where breakouts were discovered. Ebola Zaire & ebola Sudan were the first species identified after their respective outbreaks.
There's even ebola Reston, because of a breakout in Reston, VA. Reston infects humans (we develop antibodies), but does not cause Ebola virus disease in us.
- ceejayoz 7y agoAll of these predate the policy change. https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-has-a-name-the-deadly-disease-is-covid-19/ https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-has-a-name-the-deadl... > In 2015, after a few decades of what came to seem in hindsight like culturally insensitive missteps, the World Health Organization issued a policy statement on how to name emerging infectious diseases. Part of the point was to help scientists generate names before the public does it for them. So there are rules. The names have to be generic, based on science-y things like symptoms or severity—no more places (Spanish Flu), people (Creutzfeld-Jacob disease), or animals (bird flu).
- favorited 7y agoCorrect, I was speaking more in the context of Ebolavirus itself. As you pointed out, Johnson suggested naming it after the river in the 70s – but every Ebola species named (the last one in the early 2010s) still had a local name attached.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoNo more people? That's a huge mistake. There's a long history of naming diseases after the first to characterize it. Eponymous disease names are the majority?
- lonelappde 7y agoEbola is a relatively local disease, since it travels by animals and direct contact, not couhing, and because it so dangerous that it kills or incapacitates before people travel too far. Even so, it's misleading because Ebola doesn't care about geographic boundaries.