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by josefx 1778 days ago
Technical name is a bit funny, in the past we had no issues calling something a "spanish flu", "bird flu" or "Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease", now these are officially considered "inappropriate". With the WHO responsible for picking an interim name until an appropriate name could be issued when an inappropriate name enters common use. They even list tourism among the things that absolutely need protection against this type of language misuse[1].

[1] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/163636/WHO_...
1 comments
robocat 1778 days ago
> Spanish Flu

Which the Spanish called “French Flu”, and which many signs point to it actually being “American Flu”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC340389/

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josefx 1777 days ago
> American Flu

Funny how Wikipedia mentions that it was used early on in France but in order to avoid antagonizing an ally journalists were advised (source is a bit short on that) to call it the Spanish flu[1]. So there was also active suppression going on to keep the source out of the news, just back then it was at least partially war time censorship.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Geopolitical

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