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by 3131s 2065 days ago
It's a stupid term. Why would you choose this unspecific, uninformative name for a virus instead of its actual name? Hmm...
4 comments

Because 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").
Spanish 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)

Spanish 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)

You 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.

“Wuhan Virus” for example conveys information not apparent when calling it a coronavirus.