Wuhan virus, swine flu, monkeypox: what these names for viruses or diseases can cause is well known. When the novel coronavirus spread from Wuhan in China to the world in early 2020, people who were mistaken for Chinese were marginalized in many places.
Because of the swine flu in 2009, millions of pigs were slaughtered in many countries, and because of smallpox, Brazil’s first monkeys were already attacked with stones and poison – all irrational reactions on the mistaken assumption that one can protect oneself from a new danger in doing so.
The WHO has been pushing for weeks
The WHO has been pushing for weeks to rename monkeypox. But aren’t these catchy names better than combinations of letters and numbers like H1N1 for swine flu or Sars-CoV-2 for the corona virus? “What is easy is not necessarily necessary,” says Richard Neher of the University of Basel’s Biozentrum to the German Press Agency.
He signed a call in June to find neutral names for smallpox subgroups and not talk about “West African” or “Congo Basin” groups. This gives the wrong impression that recent outbreaks, particularly in Europe, the US and Brazil, have something to do with Africa, he says. This is discriminatory and stigmatizing. The more than two dozen virologists criticized the fact that photos of African patients were often provided.
Inaccurate and stigmatizing geographical designations
“The problem with geographic designations is, on the one hand, that they are often incorrect and, on the other hand, that they often lead to disadvantages for the places that name the pathogens,” says Neher. For example, avoiding travel to regions. In addition, countries that monitor diseases well and discover and describe new variants of the virus, for example, would be penalized if the new variant was named after the country. The legendary Spanish flu of 1918, for example, was first reported from Spain, but the first cases occurred earlier in the US, as reported by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
That terms like swine flu or the Wuhan virus spread quickly is human, wrote Susan Hardy, a professor of social science on the University of Sydney website. “Fear needs a name, and naming something suggests that something is being done.” It’s also about looking for scapegoats.
With the new 2009 variant of the influenza virus, it was pigs, although the virus can also infect humans and be transmitted from person to person. When it comes to the corona virus, it wasn’t just then US President Donald Trump who spoke of the “Wuhan virus” or “China virus” to blame Beijing for the spread. He explicitly demanded that China be held accountable.
Monkeypox also in rodents
Since 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) has guidelines to prevent disease names from having a negative impact on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, or that could harm cultural, social, regional or ethnic groups.
Monkeypox virus is so named because it was first detected in monkeys in Denmark in the 1950s. It could also have been called a Danish virus, like the Marburg virus, so named because it was identified in the city of Hesse in the 1950s. 1960. In the case of monkeypox, it is now clear that monkeys – like humans – can be infected. But the natural hosts are rodents. In recent spread, the virus is transmitted by close contact between humans and is not related to monkeys.
A panel of hundreds of virologists (ICTV) is responsible for designating the virus. They also named the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2. Disease names are decided by the WHO. She named the disease Covid-19 caused by Sars-CoV-2.
Maybe I can protect one or another monkey if the name is changed. But the monkeys were also attacked during the yellow fever outbreaks in Brazil.
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Stigmatization and discrimination against people affected by a disease is another issue. The immunodeficiency first found in gay men in the US in the 1980s was initially called the Grid – for gay-related immunodeficiency. While it has long been known that the disease is by no means limited to gay men, changing the name to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) initially had little effect. For many years, people stayed away from gay people for fear of contagion.