Ebola is from the river it originated. Zika, West Nile, etc. It's not racist to ...

notacoward · on March 13, 2020

It's not racist, but it's stigmatizing and that facilitates racists. Let's stop doing that.

s_y_n_t_a_x · on March 13, 2020

No it's not stigmatizing, it's a location, you are mind reading the entire population.

There is precedent (I listed them above) for how viruses are colloquially named based on their location.

Let's stop trying to find racial issues where they don't exist.

notacoward · on March 13, 2020

> There is precedent

Appeal to tradition (i.e. a well known fallacy). Denied.

> Let's stop trying to find racial issues where they don't exist.

Translation: "Let's turn a blind eye to racism-enabling behaviors where they do exist."

CodiePetersen · on March 13, 2020

> Appeal to tradition. Denied.

That's rich coming from the guy who just said we can call it Spanish Flu because it's old.

notacoward · on March 13, 2020

That's an exceptionally non-constructive comment. There's nothing hypocritical or inconsistent about suggesting that we change what we can and not what we can't. We can't change the "Spanish flu" moniker. It's too late, it having been written into textbooks for generations. If we could erase those references, I'd say we should, but we can't. The best we can do is refer to it by a different name - "1918 flu" seems common - when discussing it now.

The appeal to tradition here is the idea that we should continue that practice even when we know better and have an opportunity to do better. I reject that. Is "cling to tradition regardless of effect" really the hill you feel you must die on? An odd attitude for anyone in tech, I must say.

ajross · on March 13, 2020

Maybe not, but this disease is not named "Wuhan", it's named COVID-19. Insisting that we call a virus by a different name to try to blame a specific region when the rest of the world has decided to call it something else... I dunno, that smells off to me.

s_y_n_t_a_x · on March 14, 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

> Because the strain was first discovered in Wuhan, China, it is sometimes referred to informally as the Wuhan coronavirus

I would suggestion you to look at the sources linked after that statement in the Wikipedia article.

Colloquial names are not designated, they form naturally by people. The location of the origin of the virus is a natural place to start.

Yes they now have an official name for the virus, as they do other famous viruses that don't go by their official name by the general public.