[CorrectHorseBat]

Or all the effort to not call it China Virus/Wuhan flu because that's racist and we don't name viruses after places anymore.

Virus variants named after places on the other hand are apparently perfectly fine. So we don't have the Chinese virus but we do have British, Brazilian and Indian variants.

[glitchcrab]

This is incorrect given the new WHO guidelines https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/01/covid-19-varia...

[cm2187]

Except it is TVs and newspapers that were lecturing us that it was racist to call it the chinese flu and that are now happily using the xx-variant designation. It is the obvious bad faith that I find appalling.

[zarzavat]

Because there was no other name they could use. Blame the WHO for moving at the speed of molasses on this issue.

[cm2187]

By the time it is deemed a variant, it has been sequenced number of times across the country and the health authorities always have a code or name to refer to this particular strain.

[zarzavat]

They had a code but not a name. The media can't refer to things by a confusing jumble of letters and numbers, they need a name, and if there's no official name then the media will create one themselves. Hence "India variant".

This is basic PR, e.g. when Heartbleed was disclosed it was given a name so that people could discuss it and attach meaning to it.

[CorrectHorseBat]

I guess it's good that they realized that, but I don't really understand why this time it took half a year. We'll see if the newspapers follow it.

[glitchcrab]

It's good, but it's not exactly easy to remember. Hence why the papers here in the UK now tend to say something like 'the Delta variant, which was first seen in India' - that's only marginally better than 'the Indian variant' tbh.

[logifail]

> It's good, but it's not exactly easy to remember [[.]

Saying "$origin virus" is _definitely_ easier to remember than - say - something like "Covid19".

Except that we were told that using "$origin" was racist, so we had to stop, and we had to use the non-easy-to-remember version.

Where we are the media has been happily talking about "the British variant" and "the Indian variant", but no-one seems to be calling _that_ racist. At least no-one who the media cares about.

[croon]

Sure, let's just all blame it on the greeks!

[bildung]

Nobody in the world except the US right called it that, and it is indeed uncommon to name viruses after its place of origin.

[zpeti]

Literally any new variant has been called by its origin in the last year: -kent/brit variant -indian variant -california variant

What are you on about?

[bildung]

> What are you on about?

Not those variants, obviously.

[blululu]

Back in the early days Singapore very quickly created a fantastic web based information panel on the state of the Virus in the city. It's still running but they no longer use the original url: http://wuhanvirus.sg

[finnthehuman]

Mers, lyme, west nile, Rocky Mountain, Zika, hanta, Ebola.

[avereveard]

Except for the Spanish flu, the Brazilian flu, almost every single mammarenavirus strain...

[bildung]

The Spanish Flu most probably originated in the US, not Spain. Spain just had a pretty free press and published much about it. Never heard about the Brazilian Flu and couldn't find out when and where this was supposed to be, so can't comment here.

[KMag]

The question wasn't historically if the place-of-origin names were accurate. The question was if they were historically common.

I think naming diseases after places is a bad practice we should probably do away with, but it certainly has precedent. Offhand, there's also the Marburg virus. My understanding is also that it was unusual to name the Ebola virus after the nearby river instead of the nearby town.

[brippalcharrid]

Isn't it similar to naming medical conditions after the people that discover them? After all, it's naming pathogens after the place where there were was adequate diagnostic expertise to identify them and in which there was sufficient scientific and press freedom to report on them. And geography is obviously important in the context of epidemics/pandemics. No country or locality should receive special treatment in this regard, but much of the MSM appears to have been bought or cowed into submission by the geopolitical influence of the CCP.

[DemocracyFTW]

> we do have British, Brazilian and Indian variants

which will now be re-named by Greek letter names

[myko]

Context matters. The trump administration used those phrases to stir up anti-Chinese and racist sentiments.

[CorrectHorseBat]

Context matters, but consistency too. If it's racist too call it the Wuhan flu (which I can agree with) then the Indian variant is too.

[mixmastamyk]

Sounds placist to me.

[lugu]

Not to forget WIV1 virus..