3 ms·
It's a novel coronavirus, not just any old coronavirus. It jumped from an animal species. What you are saying is equivalent to "The Spanish flu is just the flu.
by joshocar 6y ago
It's a novel coronavirus, not just any old coronavirus. It jumped from an animal species. What you are saying is equivalent to "The Spanish flu is just the flu. Thousands of people get the flu every year and we probably have some immunity to it. No big deal."
- interestica 6y agoWhen does this one stop being novel? This naming convention just has "new coke" vibes to me. I mean, when there is an other emergent virus of this type, it will take the name "novel". Which might typically be fine, but not when the name has become part of a public lexicon. It's all just a weird convention really. If another major novel type emerges soon it will be absurd if medical historians are looking back and trying to determine which virus articles are talking about. Coronavirus Classic.
- joshocar 6y agoThe scientific community has a specific name they use for Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Also, timing would also be a very good indicator of what virus the author is talking about. Novel is in relation to the human races exposure to it. For example, there are modern flu virus that trace back evolutionarily to the Spanish flu, but are not novel, they are just "the flu" today. When the Spanish flu jumped to humans it was a novel flu, hence how deadly it was. Again, scientists have clear distinctions between different kinds of flu's, e.g. H1N1, H1N3.
- Izkata 6y agoExactly this. People have latched on to the wrong meaning of "novel", ascribing meaning beyond just "not seen before", instead treating it something like "acts worse/differently from other coronaviruses".