[bjowen]

You forgot Irish disease, French disease, German disease, Italian disease [0]. Why do you think the toponym of the point of discovery of a virus or strain is relevant? At this point, it has been circulating on multiple continents for 18 months, your most likely source of infection is in your neighbourhood, not another country or person whose ancestry you believe to be associated with that place. Systematic names have been increasingly common for influenza strains for a decade now, and if anything the systematic name SARS-2 gives you more useful information about the virus. To the extent that the choice not to call it something arbitrary [1] like Spanish flu is political, it is to protect people from ostracism and hatecrimes, which is an actual problem that happens in such circumstances and has since December 2019 [0,2].

If we were making name choices for inherently-parseable utility, we’d be calling every respiratory virus Coverface Washhands Stayhome.

[0] https://jmss.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Racis... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805838/#!po=1.... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12103-020-09545...