# Racism and "Wuhan virus" - only because Wuhan is a fairly well known large city? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 19, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807 "2020-03-19T15:29:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/21 "2020-03-19T17:55:18Z")
> [@Chingon](#): > > How does it help Americans to call it a foreign virus? Do certain medicines only work on domestic viruses? How does it help to blame a buffoon like Trump more than Xi and the CCP when it was policy for the Chinese government to hide and deny the truth? Maybe calling it the CCP virus would assign blame where it rightly belongs without tarring an entire nation? ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/22 "2020-03-19T18:05:50Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Yes, WHO is saying that. > > [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/disease-caused-by-the-novel-coronavirus-officially-has-a-name-covid-19/https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/23/its-been-sequenced-its-spread-across-borders-now-the-new-pneumonia-causing-virus-needs-a-name/This](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/disease-caused-by-the-novel-coronavirus-officially-has-a-name-covid-19/https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/23/its-been-sequenced-its-spread-across-borders-now-the-new-pneumonia-causing-virus-needs-a-name/This) article details a number of diseases with place names and the stigma that became associated with those places. > > Look at it this way: if someone in your family was the very first person diagnosed with a new highly contagious and deadly disease, would you want the world to know that as the MyFamilyName Disease? That misses the point. The OP, and apparently this debate, is about whether or not people think applying this label, the “Wuhan virus”, is bad because it stigmatizes the population of this supposedly well-known city. No mention was made of the broader problem of xenophobia or racism, effectively reducing it to the level of a dispute over which city has the better deep dish pizza or why [insert sports team] sucks so hard while [insert competing sports team from home town] rocks. It takes the “let’s stop emphasizing the overseas origin of this virus, particular to China, when it comes to efforts to combat its spread so that we don’t turn this into a cause celebre for a bunch of xenophobic racists” position and reduces it to a straw man of “hey, don’t call it the Wuhan virus because that’s mean to the people of Wuhan that you might interact with in every day life since it’s such a big and well known city.” It strikes me as a straw man with a side of question begging. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/23 "2020-03-19T18:14:01Z")
Politics I guess ---
**Author:** ![Kovitlac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/2bfe46/32.png) [@Kovitlac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kovitlac)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/24 "2020-03-19T18:20:07Z")
I’m betting there’s more backlash about “Wuhan fever” because of the increase in political correctness since a lot of the prior examples you gave. I’m not saying PC is bad or good - I realize this isn’t the thread for it and I think it highly depends on the context, anyway. But you really can’t ignore the fact that it’s become more and more important to a broad number of people and has continued to increase in more recent years. It’s almost become a competition for some people, it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/25 "2020-03-19T18:23:37Z")
When I first heard of the WHO guidelines to not name diseases after places because of the possibility of racism or xenophobia, I thought it was absurd. Who would be so idiotic as to blame a people just because they were the first ones to get sick? I’ve since learned, lots of folks would be that idiotic. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/26 "2020-03-19T18:24:29Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Did Trump allow the virus to spread in China? Did he allow it to spread in Italy? Two years ago, his administration made a 75% reduction to an Obama-era initiative aimed at stopping potential epidemics before they cross borders and China was one of those countries cut out. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/27 "2020-03-19T18:29:16Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Does the US have a history of killing millions of its own citizens? Yes. > **[When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’ | HISTORY](https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states)** > > By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained > [@](#): > > From the time Europeans arrived on American shores, the frontier—the edge territory between white man’s civilization and the untamed natural world—became a shared space of vast, clashing differences that led the U.S. government to authorize over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids on Indians, the most of any country in the world against its indigenous people. By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 indigenous people remained, a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15 million living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/28 "2020-03-19T18:41:19Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > That misses the point. The OP, and apparently this debate, is about whether or not people think applying this label, the “Wuhan virus”, is bad because it stigmatizes the population of this supposedly well-known city. No mention was made of the broader problem of xenophobia or racism, effectively reducing it to the level of a dispute over which city has the better deep dish pizza or why [insert sports team] sucks so hard while [insert competing sports team from home town] rocks. I quoted you and answered the question you asked directly. If you wanted a different question answered, you should have asked a different question. > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > It takes the “let’s stop emphasizing the overseas origin of this virus, particular to China, when it comes to efforts to combat its spread so that we don’t turn this into a cause celebre for a bunch of xenophobic racists” position and reduces it to a straw man of “hey, don’t call it the Wuhan virus because that’s mean to the people of Wuhan that you might interact with in every day life since it’s such a big and well known city.” > > It strikes me as a straw man with a side of question begging. Your argument strikes me as idiotic and self-absorbed. The question was “who decided this was stigmatizing?” and the answer is “the people who name diseases because people told them it was stigmatizing to have a disease named after the place they lived.” ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/29 "2020-03-19T18:56:10Z")
My point is not so much, “is it right to call it Wuhan virus or not,” as it is, “Why aren’t the other names - Zika, Ebola, Rift Valley, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, Lassa fever, Nipah virus, etc. considered problematic?” ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/30 "2020-03-19T19:00:13Z")
I wouldn’t mind “Wuhan Virus” but “Coronavirus” seems to be the name that stuck, and is fine for everyday conversations and journalism because everyone knows which coronavirus you’re talking about. I wouldn’t want any variety of “fever” in the name as that might make people less worried about spreading it if they don’t have a fever. Any variety of “China” would go against the nomenclature of specificity we’ve been building up over the past half-century or so, and sounds just as out of touch as using the words “Oriental” or “Negro”: not offensive in itself but a warning sign of a backwards mindset. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/31 "2020-03-19T19:01:22Z")
Dupe ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/32 "2020-03-19T19:01:34Z")
Absent any evidence to the contrary, I am inclined to believe that it has nothing to do with Wuhan- all place names are considered problematic including Ebola, Zika, Middle East, etc.- which is why the decision is made and from now on it’s FGMX-27 instead of Chicago Grippe or Toronto Crotch-Rot. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/33 "2020-03-19T19:20:29Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > My point is not so much, “is it right to call it Wuhan virus or not,” as it is, “Why aren’t the other names - Zika, Ebola, Rift Valley, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, Lassa fever, Nipah virus, etc. considered problematic?” Linked earlier: > [@](#): > > The scientists who investigated the first known Ebola outbreak were aware of the risk of leaving an indelible stain on a particular place. That team, led by legendary virus hunter Karl Johnson, traveled to Yambuku, in what was then Zaire — now the Democratic Republic of the Congo — in 1976 to try to determine what was killing people who worked in or sought care at a hospital run by Belgian nuns. > > Johnson proposed that the virus be called Ebola, after a river he spotted on a map, roughly 40 miles away from where the outbreak was taking place, according to a report of the outbreak response, published in 2016. Yambuku was spared the infamy of being the name of a highly deadly virus. Many of the diseases you name were named well before awareness of the stigmatization was an accepted fact. Zika was named after the Ziika Forest, for instance, in 1947. It’s simply too late to change the name; it is already printed in thousands of news articles, medical papers, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/34 "2020-03-19T19:29:04Z")
[Here are the WHO best practices for naming of new human infectious diseases](https://www.who.int/topics/infectious_diseases/naming-new-diseases/en/): > [@](#): > > The World Health Organization (WHO), in consultation and collaboration with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has identified best practices for the naming of new human diseases, with the aim to minimize unnecessary negative impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups. > [@](#): > > Best practices for disease naming > A disease name should consist of a combination of terms listed in Table A, based on the below principles. Terms listed in Table B should be avoided. General principles of use of terms include: > > 1. Generic descriptive terms can be used in any name. Generic terms will be most useful when available information on the disease or syndrome is not sufficiently robust, because these basic characteristics are unlikely to change as additional information become available. > e.g. respiratory disease, hepatitis, neurologic syndrome, watery diarrhoea, enteritis > 2. Specific descriptive terms should be used whenever the available information is considered sufficiently robust that the vast changes to the epidemiology or clinical picture are unlikely to occur. Plain terms are preferred to highly technical terms. > e.g. progressive, juvenile, severe, winter > 3. If the causative pathogen is known, it should be used as part of the disease name with additional descriptors. The pathogen should not be directly equated with the disease as a pathogen may cause more than one disease. > e.g. novel coronavirus respiratory syndrome > 4. Names should be short (minimum number of characters) and easy to pronounce. e.g. H7N9, rabies, malaria, polio > 5. Given that long names are likely to be shortened into an acronym, potential acronyms should be evaluated to ensure they also comply with these best practices. > 6. Names should be as consistent as possible with guidance from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) Content Model Reference Guide2. Tables A and B may be of particular interest. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/35 "2020-03-19T19:30:44Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > My point is not so much, “is it right to call it Wuhan virus or not,” as it is, “Why aren’t the other names - Zika, Ebola, Rift Valley, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, Lassa fever, Nipah virus, etc. considered problematic?” For the same reason that the United Negro College Fund and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People haven’t changed their names. If they were named today they would have different names, but it’s too late and not worth the effort to get people to switch to a new name. However, new diseases don’t need to be named with the same mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/36 "2020-03-19T19:39:12Z")
The difference between the Wuhan Virus and the other geographically-named viruses is that only Wuhan has the power of the Chinese state trying to get the name changed. _Everyone_ including the major media outlets, was calling it the ‘Wuhan Virus’ just a couple of weeks ago. Then the Chinese government started squawking, and suddenly calling a virus by its geographic origin is ‘problematic’, even though that’s been the standard for well over 100 years. At the same time, China has been downplaying its role in practices that led to the virus transferring to people, covering up the virus itself, destroying evidence about its origin, and is now trying to rewrite history. You see, China isn’t a corrupt country with terrible health practices that led to a pandemic that they tried to cover up, hut a victim of racism that is magnanimously trying to help the world. I suggest we call it the ‘Wuhan-Xi’ virus, or the ‘Wuhan-CCP’ virus to punish them for this crap, or perhaps the Wuhan-Pooh virus. And reporters who waste time in press conferences about a global pandemic to ask questions about ‘problematic’ name choices or other SJW or anti-Trump ‘gotchas’ should be banned from press conferences until this over. Trivialities are for trivial times. When shit gets serious, there is no time to ask about the gender equity on virus response teams or whether the head of a hospital has the correct skin color or gender. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/37 "2020-03-19T19:41:01Z")
BTW, the World Health Organization is heavily influenced by China, and the WHO’s initial response to the virus downplayed it and basically repeated the Chinese line for some time until reality became unavoidable. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/38 "2020-03-19T19:43:37Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The difference between the Wuhan Virus and the other geographically-named viruses is that only Wuhan has the power of the Chinese state trying to get the name changed. > > _Everyone_! including the major media outlets, was calling it the ‘Wuhan Virus’ just a couple of weeks ago. Then the Chinese government started squawking, and suddenly calling a virus by its geographic origin is ‘problematic’, even though that’s been the standard for well over 100 years. [Until five years ago](https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/163636/WHO_HSE_FOS_15.1_eng.pdf;jsessionid=F32517253C1808CFF9A4F4E007733B0E?sequence=1), you mean. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/39 "2020-03-19T19:45:18Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The difference between the Wuhan Virus and the other geographically-named viruses is that only Wuhan has the power of the Chinese state trying to get the name changed. Not true. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > _Everyone_! including the major media outlets, was calling it the ‘Wuhan Virus’ just a couple of weeks ago. Not true. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Then the Chinese government started squawking, and suddenly calling a virus by its geographic origin is ‘problematic’, even though that’s been the standard for well over 100 years. Not true. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I suggest we call it the ‘Wuhan-Xi’ virus, or the ‘Wuhan-CCP’ virus to punish them for this crap, or perhaps the Wuhan-Pooh virus. An absolutely reprehensible, vindictive and misguided suggestion. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2020, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807/40 "2020-03-19T20:45:47Z")
Here you go. It appears to be deliberate: > **[Photo Of The Day: "Chinese" Virus - News & Guts Media](https://www.newsandguts.com/photo-of-the-day-chinese-virus/?fbclid=IwAR3svJna4QsoT-4JyRAiiuCT62rl7lkTzFc9bUcFV18Xbgnb_Y4duoSJ0Gw)** > > An intrepid photographer at the White House briefing today captured this image of Donald Trump’s notes. Click below on the tweet from Axios and take a close look. The word “corona” is crossed out and replaced with “Chinese.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-and-wuhan-virus-only-because-wuhan-is-a-fairly-well-known-large-city/849807.md?page=3)