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Virus name chosen to avoid Woke sensibilities for people, animals, locations, etc

#1
C C Offline
Never mind that generic "coronavirus" itself could potentially offend Mexican beer makers and drinkers of the beverage, and Covid could be perceived as disparaging those working for or associated with a certain company.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51466362

INTRO: The World Health Organization says the official name for the disease caused by the new coronavirus is Covid-19. "We now have a name for the disease and it's Covid-19," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.

It comes after the death toll from the virus passed 1,000. Tens of thousands of people have been infected. Dr Ghebreyesus called on the world to fight the new virus as aggressively as possible.

The word coronavirus refers to the group of viruses it belongs to, rather than the latest strain. The virus itself has been designated SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.

Researchers have been calling for an official name to avoid confusion and stigmatisation of any group or country. "We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease," the WHO chief said... (MORE)
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#2
billvon Offline
(Feb 12, 2020 06:31 PM)C C Wrote: Virus name chosen to avoid Woke sensibilities for people, animals, locations, etc
"Woke sensibilities?"  Hardly.  It's what it is always about - $$$.  No one will buy kid's toys (or even cellphone accessories) from a city "named after a virus."
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#3
C C Offline
(Feb 13, 2020 12:23 AM)billvon Wrote:
(Feb 12, 2020 06:31 PM)C C Wrote: Virus name chosen to avoid Woke sensibilities for people, animals, locations, etc
"Woke sensibilities?"  Hardly.  It's what it is always about - $$$.  No one will buy kid's toys (or even cellphone accessories) from a city "named after a virus."

Cynicism potentially warranted to a degree with respect to if more sprawling economic locales continue to serve as ground zeros or close to that, in contrast to other sites of the past which contributed to viral labels (below). These WHO guidelines weren't established until 2015 (before the Wuhan outbreak). Which is to say, the "awareness" or accelerated sensitivities of recent times could really be the legit motivation, or that might be used as camouflage, or both (I'd favor the latter).

But before the last few years, if anyone cared one whit about ethnicity, animals, and geographical reputations in this regard... Then those concerned groups/movements were apparently not very effective or influential in terms of initiating reform. Eventual technical, biological tags for these bugs have been around for ages; but 2015 seems to mark a formalized, concerted effort on the part of WHO to preempt popular names and actively disparage them if they do get out of the gate early.

"Middle East respiratory syndrome" (MERS, camel flu, etc) was christened as such circa a mere three years prior to 2015.

In the late 1990s, the Nipah virus was named after a village in Malaysia.

Russian Flu of 1977 may have actually begun in northeastern China instead of USSR.

A village near the Ebola River (DROC) contributed to that obvious identity, in 1976.

Hong Kong flu in 1968.

Asian flu 1956 to 1958.

The Zika virus got its name in the 1940s from a Ugandan forest.

The West Nile Virus was uncovered in Uganda in 1937.

Spain wasn't even the initial location of the Spanish Flu, but it got saddled with the title due to its lack of or less war-news censorship during the tail-end of WWI.

Japanese encephalitis goes all the way back to at least the 1870s.

- - -

So-called bird flu, various.

Swine flu, various.
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