.@MSNBC’s @davidgura Thinks All Microbiologists Are Racists (via @AlexBerezow) acsh.org/news/2020/03/0…
Historically, microbiologists named new diseases after locations, animals or people. To this day, flu strains are named after the city in which they were first isolated. Obviously, that's because microbiologists are racist. Right?
“It will certainly lead to boring names and a lot of confusion,” predicts Linfa Wang, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong.
“You should not take political correctness so far that in the end no one is able to distinguish these diseases,” says Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn, Germany.
Both experts are correct.
Both experts are correct.
Avoiding unique names for new diseases will cause confusion. "Virus #4" is not a name that would inspire anyone to remember what it was.
And as Dr. Josh Bloom wrote previously, embracing political correctness comes with its own pitfalls: "[A] comprehensible and accurate name might provide a little incentive for countries and their citizens to pay a little more attention to public health." Fair point.
Discovered a disease? WHO has new rules for avoiding offensive names sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/d…
WHO Goes PC In Renaming Wuhan Virus (via @JoshBloomACSH) acsh.org/news/2020/02/1…
The World Health Organization has decided to give the Wuhan virus two names, both nebulous, so that no person, animal or culture gets offended. Perhaps WHO is passing the sensitivity test -- but it's also flunking the sensibility test.
A very scary new virus is making a possibly-unprecedented run around the world and Ghebreyesus is worried about stigmatizing a bat (1), the people who ate it, and the city where it all began. Well, that's just too bad.
I will still call it the Wuhan coronavirus (and I suspect others will too) because it is perfectly accurate.
We know exactly where the outbreak began and (very likely) why. Pretending otherwise by sugarcoating the name is obfuscating and counterproductive, especially given the wild and conflicting hourly headlines. Perhaps a good dose of "accurate" isn't such a bad idea.
Yet, the official name of the virus is now SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes is called COVID-19. To non-scientists neither of these names means anything, and the fact that the virus and the disease have different names can only serve to further confuse the public.
But the term "Wuhan virus" means plenty. Making the world "forget" the origin of the epidemic may pass the sensitivity test but it fails the sensibility test.
