There's a semantic difference with "X virus" and "Y variant". "X virus" denotes the virus was caused by country X and is behind it all, whereas "Y variant" denotes it was mutated in there but is not the root cause of it all.
I don't think that's true. West Nile Virus wasn't caused by people West of the Nile, the Spanish Flu wasn't caused by Spain, MERS is called that because it was discovered in the Middle East, not because people in the Middle East caused it, etc. The form "X virus" does not at all imply that the virus was caused by X.
Then, of course, there is the very real possibility that China literally did cause the virus.
I don't think there is so much, the distinction between "caused by" and "discovered there" escapes most people in casual use
Imho the reason this time it was different with terms like "China flu" is not that it's generally unacceptable to nickname an illness by it's region of first discovery, but that Trump was actively using this terminology to push an agenda
Yeah, at a certain point back in 2020 it suddenly was very bad to have variants with geographic origin in the naming. Although that was how it had been done in many other cases.
> The World Health Organization (WHO) mostly works to reduce the physical toll of disease. But last week it turned to another kind of harm: the insult and stigma inflicted by diseases named for people, places, and animals. Among the existing monikers that its new guidelines “for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases” would discourage: Ebola, swine flu, Rift Valley Fever, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and monkey pox.
is an excellent example of why that kind of naming is stupid, given that it likely first appeared in the US and primarily became known as "spanish" because Spain (not being at war) was actually talking about it instead of censoring reports about it.
I remember seeing links to reveddit, a site I made, over this. A competing subreddit claimed censorship [1] by posting low-res screenshots of removed posts [2]. It was just a way to drum up support for their own subreddit. The screenshots were misleading because every subreddit with any history has tons of removed posts, and that's the default view on reveddit. I'm 99% sure most users understood this right away though.
Do you think Wuhan_Flu (the creator/mods) had/has bad intentions? At the time it was one of the few subs where you could talk about things you couldn't talk about in other subs (info leaking out from China regarding the virus). That sub was quarantined for spreading misinformation and fearmongering which someone at /r/OutOfTheLoop summarized as:
> The users of that subreddit believe in a conspiracy that the Wuhan Coronavirus is more serious than the governments of China and the United States are telling them. They believe the government is mismanaging the outbreak. They were quarantined because an admin believed the subreddit was spreading misinformation.
They may well have believed what they shared. In this case, other subs were not removing more content, despite the claims [1], and it was simple to verify.
Thank you. Really appreciate your input. I did read that Vice article before and recently shared it here as well.
From what I remember at the time /r/coronavirus and /r/china_flu removed any discussion about "leaks" (or were they?) from China. On the other hand, not all the "leaks" discussed in /r/Wuhan_Flu turned out to be what they seemed (videos of people "dropping dead" on the streets etc.).
> Thank you. Really appreciate your input. I did read that Vice article before and recently shared it here as well.
Sure thing.
> From what I remember at the time /r/coronavirus and /r/china_flu removed any discussion about "leaks" (or were they?) from China.
I'm no expert on the content. I only know that the amount of posts removed as shown on reveddit is going to look the same at first glance regardless of what subreddit you are looking at. As for which topics were removed, someone could do a research project on that.
> On the other hand, not all the "leaks" discussed in /r/Wuhan_Flu turned out to be what they seemed (videos of people "dropping dead" on the streets etc.).
I agree and think the top comment on that OOTL post you referenced gives a more balanced view of what was going on [1],
> For background, everyone agrees the outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019 is an easily spread, relatively lethal [edit: relatively lethal compared to influenza], brand new virus. Unfortunately, outside that, details are very sparse and major organizations WHO, CDC are non-committal about predictions.
> Since “official” details are very sparse, true details are emerging outside official channels along with a whole lot of conspiracy theorizing. The two are extremely mixed at this point. A quick review showed the sub in question contains all levels. For example, excellent NEJM articles showing that the virus can spread prior to symptoms interspersed with video footage of a bunch of black birds flying into China because they can apparently smell all the dead bodies.
> The name r/China_Flu was created at a time when SARS-CoV-2 had not been named and was only affecting China. Subreddit names cannot be changed after they are created. This subreddit is a place to discuss the 2019 Wuhan-originated novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes, called COVID-19.
What the screenshot shows is that only a handful of mods were running all major coronavirus related subs. /r/China_Flu is a major coronavirus related subreddit endorsed and promoted by Reddit themselves. Originally the image is not coming from 4chan.
