[alvatar]

I find it interesting that it’s ok to call it Spanish Flu (while it wasn’t even originated there), but is politically incorrect to call this one the Wuhan virus or the Chinese flu. Political correctness has always a political intention I guess.

[arboc]

It's kind of a complicated issue. I do think that we should refer to the 1918 flu as just that. However, since that's so far back in the past, you won't find a lot of people pointing their fingers at Spain and accusing Spaniards of being inhuman scum. On the other hand, you have a LOT of people saying "Chinese flu" who then jump to the conclusion that the Chinese people themselves are to blame and inherently 'bad', aggravating racism against the Chinese. The Chinese government deserve a lot of criticism for so many things, including their persecution (and most likely execution in some cases) of Chinese citizens who reported on the pandemic. But hate crimes happening right now against Chinese, and people who happen to look remotely Chinese, are very real. I see little benefit in referring to the 2019 Coronavirus/COVID-19 as a "Chinese flu", while I see huge downsides.

In sum, while I think "Spanish" flu is more factually incorrect, I see talk about a "Chinese" flu as more acutely harmful. So - 1918 flu, COVID-19, IMO.

[alvatar]

I mostly agree with your comment. My main counterpoint to this angle, which is strictly correct, is that many people lack the same kind of context that you described, and do interpret “Spanish flu” and “Wuhan/Chinese flu” as “caused by them”, and in some cases even missing the historical perspective. There might be something to be said about blame in one case and the other, but I don’t think is that relevant (although perhaps at some point there should be some debate on the responsibility of China -if any- in this pandemic)

[Gigablah]

It's ironic that you talk about stigmatization, yet indulge in baseless speculation about execution of pandemic reporters.

[arboc]

I think "stigmatization" isn't quite the word for spreading disinformation/speculations about the actions of a government, but you're right.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Qiushi#February_2020_disa...

"Citizens reporting on the epidemic have been made to disappear" would be a more factual description. And as can be seen from the first article linked above, "disappearance" doesn't necessarily lead to a fatal end.

There is some not-direct-but-still-relevant support for being inclined to think that death is not entirely out of the question for those reporters, e. g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...

But again, I think you were right to call me out on speculating. We just don't know, and if there's one thing we don't need more of right now, it's speculation from non-experts like me. Thank you.

[shazzzm]

I think intent matters here. Spanish Flu is from so long ago it already has a universal name, whereas I think referring to COVID-19 as the Chinese virus is usually only done by people who'd like to blame China.

[rosywoozlechan]

How much blame does China deserve for the pandemic? No blame at all?

[cjslep]

In what way does assigning any blame help? Magically US citizens will be able to successfully sue China for lost wages? Magically there will be less deaths?

[rosywoozlechan]

Accountability matters. When things go wrong it's important to assign blame to understand why things went wrong and how to prevent them in the future.

So in this particular case, a way blaming might help would be to recognize those organizations and governments that were incapable of preventing the spread of the disease and to recognize in the future a quicker need to mitigate and not to assume China will take care of it, assuming China deserves blame. It may also help by recuperating the economic loss by holding those responsible for it and requiring payments. These are common things that happen in all walks of life and the international context is no different. People and countries shouldn't get to walk away from massive fuck ups if it is possible to hold them to account. At least we can try.

[Izkata]

> When things go wrong it's important to assign blame to understand why things went wrong and how to prevent them in the future.

Exactly. Things have recently been declassified that makes me very surprised pandemics like this hadn't already happened a few times in just the past few years. For example: https://news.yahoo.com/suspected-sars-virus-and-flu-found-in...

[cjslep]

There are ways to understand why things went wrong and how to prevent them in the future, without assigning blame. Blameless post-mortem.

I'm a reasonable man, I find accountability a positive virtue. I'm also not a foolish one, for I understand trying to assign blame for an act of god is definitely NOT normal. And I understand the "blameless post-mortem" is a tech-industry standard well understood, so I am surprised to find the "blame game" card being played here. Consider:

Every time a hurricane rolls off the coast of west Africa and trashes the Eastern seaboard, you don't see the US blaming west Africa.

You don't see Missouri trying to pin the Joplin tornado onto neighboring Kansas/Oklahoma in order to recoup billions of dollars of damages and loss of human life. You DO get a technical NIST report that is blameless (I have worked with this particular data) [0].

When an earthquake originates in one country but flattens the city in a neighboring country, you don't see one sue the other.

When a typhoon hits SE Asia, they aren't trying to readily assign blame.

What can be assigned blame is a nation's reaction to this force majeure. At that point the people should be holding their own leaders accountable, as the assumption should always be that the neighbors are incompetent, and our own leaders are the best. That is inconvenient for the current President precisely because he politicized the disease. If he had not politicized it, his followers would be more amenable for blameless post-mortems (literal post-mortems, let's remember people are dying). Unfortunately his response was lackluster, and rather than taking accountability (you know, the virtue I agreed w/ y'all on at the beginning), he would rather shift blame. But this implies that he was relying on China to do its part. Which then begs the question: If the US President wants to blame China, why was he sitting back and relying on China on good faith when no other nation was?

To summarize why I don't believe the bullshit that is "assigning blame" for SARS-Cov-2:

- Accountability is a virtue

- Blameless postmortem is a huge cross-industry technical standard, so abandoning that is immediately suspect

- US President politicized the disease; due to this he has political motivations to avoid the virtue of accountability and how he guided the US response (making the act of "blaming" even more suspect as being a political reaction)

- Doublethink of "Did the US President really rely on the Chinese response? Blame them, not him!" (only enabled because of politicization)

There are ways to understand why things went wrong and how to prevent them in the future, without assigning blame. Blameless post-mortem. But that's now been politicized.

[0] https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/NCSTAR/NIST.NCSTAR.3.pdf

[Gigablah]

Why is it "interesting" to you? Is it not an entirely natural progression, that people would start realizing the stigma arising from associating diseases to geographical locations, and start changing the status quo?

[alvatar]

I agree with the stigma associated to locations. I believe this stigma also affects past events, even if less so. So I think the argument for renaming the 1918 pandemic holds as strongly as not naming any new one based on the geographical location.

[cjslep]

This is a false equivalence and you even hint at that very fact yourself ("Spanish Flu" => Spanish first broke worldwide censorship vs "Wuhan Flu" => Place of origination).

There was no worldwide censorship of Covid-19. So what must be "interesting" is the lack of any real argument being made in your post, instead leaving a convenient gap where an argument should be so everyone can get into a trollsy debate about projecting their own political feelings upon this awful contentless comment.

[alvatar]

Correct, my comment was devoid of opinion or arguments, it was just that, a comment. I also don’t see how your last paragraph contributes any better to a healthy debate though.

Regarding the false equivalence though, I didn’t imply that, since I don’t think you need to go so deep into the interpretation of words. If any point was to be made in my comment is just the plain wording “Spanish/Chinese flu” associates the location and its people to the stigma. This, repeated over time, contributes to the social imaginary. Not every one knows the historical facts so well, and many people hearing the words “Spanish flu”, missing the context, will still make the negative associations. And let’s not forget that for a considerable part of the population in USA (not in Europe though), Spanish means “speaks Spanish”.

[chippy]

I think I had heard that the Chinese amongst their normal population (not officially) called it the "Wuhan Flu" originally.

[Izkata]

"Wuhan pneumonia", I think it was.