I accepted the argument that tacking geographical names onto viruses (“China virus”) was unhelpful and, in some contexts, even xenophobic.
Yet now I’m reading every day about the “India variant.” What happened?
The objection to using geographic names isn’t universal. Furthermore, there are a lot of variants now, and it’s either place names, which people can remember, or names like B.1.617, which people can’t. So a lot of media is just going with place names. I suspect that’s how it’s going to be until there’s another alternative.
Looks at OPs screen name 
I can see how it might be considered objectionable. But if it’s factually accurate to say “variant currently prevalent in India” or historically correct to call it “variant first detected in India”, how would anyone prevent it from being shorthanded down to “India variant”?
Why would the term “India variant” be objectionable, when we hear about the “U.K. variant” all of the time?
The idea being that naming diseases after places (including ‘UK Variant’) is objectionable because it causes some people to cast aspersions upon the residents of that place. However, Asians and Africans are much more likely to suffer from racist attitudes in the United States than Brits, so here at least, ‘India Variant’ is more objectionable than ‘UK Variant.’ That said, as I stated above, until there’s a viable alternative, we’re going to keep using the geographic names regardless of objectionability.
Naming it after countries or other place names, is either objectionable, or it’s not. One can’t say that there’s a rational difference between “India variant” or a “U.K. variant”.
Once again, you’re wrong.
India is enormous - can they really not be more specific? It’s not the Delhi variant, or the Mumbai variant, or whatever?
Prove it.
Some people want it both ways.
For me, “India variant” carries much less weight than “China virus”. A named variant is just one of many, a particular twist on something that already exists. Naming a virus after a country carries a bit more implication that that country is at fault somehow, that it “let” the virus take hold or proliferate or worse created it. In a better world, these things would be easily dismissed and wouldn’t matter, but here and now they do.
It’s also a lot less loaded. Like you mentioned, India variant isn’t blaming India for the virus, just describing the country where the variant was first noticed. But with that, if it was called the ‘bollywood variant’ or ‘curry variant’ or something that goes [more] over the line, I could see it being more an issue.
If covid was simply called the ‘china virus’, it may still be racist but maybe not enough to be as concerned about at that moment. I think calling it kung-flu and wuhun flu*, and doing so with, what a appeared to be, a very racist/blame them not me tone, is what caused the backlash.
*I know wuhun is the name of the city, but to someone with racist tendencies, it has a ‘funny sounding Chinese name’, in the same way that someone, in a racist way, might mash a bunch of random syllables together to imitate an Asian name or refer to someone from the middle east as alibaba or aladin. If it was called the Beijing virus, I’m not sure the push to refer to it as covid would have been as strong.
We’ve already had this conversation:
Dude, you just can’t say that one rule applies to everyone! What are you thinking?!
I think we need to setup a special commission with emissaries from all over the world. They will come together and investigate tens of thousands of place names and decide which are objectionable and which are not. They shall report out weekly with a giant matrix of acceptableness (scale of 1 to 7) of place names. I hope they start working soon!
Does the same apply to foods? For example a Beef Madras Chennai, Bombay Mumbai duck or even Peking Beijing duck. All objectionable?
The whole thing is silly, IMO.
I’m unclear where my post that you were replying to was confusing to you, so let me try this again:
- They’re all objectionable
- Some moreso than other for contextual reasons
- We still don’t have a better alternative
Uh, no. Why would they be? Viruses are bad, so associating them with places and the people who live there is also bad. Food is not bad, ergo, the same problem doesn’t exist.
Unless we’re talking about Manhattan clam chowder. That stuff is awful.
I’m not confused at all; I think your opinion is silly.
The news stories that I"ve seen in Canada tend to say something likfe “variant #.#.#.#, which was first identified in country X”. That seems a reasonable approach.