| Pre-2020 examples of coronaviruses in humans include: - the common cold - SARS - MERS The common cold is colloquially differentiated from the common flu. SARS and MERS generally are not referred to as a flu. It's not a perfect proxy for colloquial language, but if you read the Wikipedia article for SARS for example, it says things like "SARS produces flu-like symptoms" and "an electronic warning system that is part of the World Health Organization's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), picked up reports of a "flu outbreak" in China" .... where you will note "flu outbreak" is in quotes, meaning... it was not a flu outbreak. Swine flu, and bird flu, in contrast, colloquially recognized "flus" are in fact variants of Influenza. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... |