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It's a stupid term. Why would you choose this unspecific, uninformative name for a virus instead of its actual name? Hmm...
by 3131s 6y ago
It's a stupid term. Why would you choose this unspecific, uninformative name for a virus instead of its actual name? Hmm...
- thoughtstheseus 6y ago“Wuhan Virus” for example conveys information not apparent when calling it a coronavirus.
- raverbashing 6y agoSpanish Flu? Though yes, it's a stupid name (Wuhan Virus would be "ok-ish" in my opinion though - if we didn't know which virus it was)
- awerawerawrjhui 6y agoSpanish Flu Hong Kong Flu West Nile Virus German Measles Guinea Worm Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Lyme Disease (named after Lyme, Connecticut) Ross River Fever Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever (named after Omsk, Russia) Ebola (named after the Ebola River) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Zika (named after the Zika Forest, Uganda) Japanese Encephalitis Marburg Virus Disease (named after Marburg, Germany)
- oblio 6y agoYou will notice that most of those names don't come from people living in that place and frequently those diseases were actively named to denigrate the locals. Or they're not named in recent times, but instead in times when using slurs was a leisure activity. Plus the egregious case of the "Spanish" flu that might have originated in the US but Spain was unlucky to be talking openly about it.
- john_moscow 6y agoBecause had the Chinese government acknowledged the Wuhan outbreak early, and done a local lockdown instead of trying to shove it under the rug, there would be no pandemic. Quite a reason to be pissed off at it (mind you, specific government and not an abstract "race").