Tuesday February 18, 2020 ~ NATIONAL
ANALYSIS. By Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
For a few weeks now the World Health Organization (WHO) has been on the leading edge of the daily news cycle (7 am Pacific Time), issuing reports featuring tallies of persons infected and dead from the Wuhan Coronavirus. This past week they insisted on a new name for the new 2019-nCov virus, anointing it with some fanfare as COVID-19. They said it is an attempt to deter racism.
It has been public health protocol for decades to name a virus after the location where it originated (e.g. long ago the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic or Brisbane B which originated in Australia in 2008), or the type of animal from which it sprang (e.g. H1N1 in 2008/2009 aka Swine Flu). Not that it was right or evident of great public relations sense, but neither did it ever really catch on to discriminate against Spain or Australia or pigs just because an infection bore its name.
WHO is admirably working slavishly hard to inform the world about the evolution of the current coronavirus epidemic, including a continual effort to put the brakes on panic by resisting a full-on declaration of pandemic. But they are fraying at the edges for their attempts to advise on economic impacts and now trying to doctor a perceived trend to the sociocultural phenomenon of perceived racism.
The phrase ‘stick to your lane’ comes to mind. Changing the name of the virus hasn’t really cut muster with mainstream media. We are using the new COVID-19 term, but are not unaware of the contrivance of it all.
======= NOTES:
This analysis piece was first published on page 2 in the February 14 to 16, 2020 weekend digest edition of West Shore Voice News.
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