Re:‘I’m not an epidemiologist but’: The rise of the corona i...
by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @07:55PM
(#22622791)
> The virus also originated from bats
Is that confirmed, or just hypothesized?
> and yet I don't see folks going around calling it the bat flu.
It's not a flu. But I wouldn't have a problem with people calling it the bat plague or whatever.
> but calling it the "wuhan flu" and "chinese flu" appears to have begun by a concerted effort to deflect attention from the administration's mishandling.
Given the attributed source of the first uses (of which I am aware) of the term "chinese flu", that seems almost certainly true.
> but this term was absolutely intended to divide
No, it was intended to evade. That's different. You said it yourself: "deflect".
Why is placing the place of origin on China (the nation), and the blame on the Chinese government, confused with placing the blame on a race?
(Yes, there are bigots and jerks who are looking for an excuse to go get racist on someone. There are some. I'm not sure that we should change our language just to avoid giving them an excuse, though, in the same way that we didn't go to these extremes for H1N1. There may be some damage to some actual people - and let's be clear, people who don't deserve it - but free speech is also a value that I uphold. I don't think we should let bigots and jerks control which words we're allowed to use.
And I've seen you elsewhere cite the Nazis and their statements about the Jews. Well, by that point, it will be time for measures equivalent to what we're doing for CoronaVirus, because the damage will be severe.)
Is that confirmed, or just hypothesized?
> and yet I don't see folks going around calling it the bat flu.
It's not a flu. But I wouldn't have a problem with people calling it the bat plague or whatever.
> but calling it the "wuhan flu" and "chinese flu" appears to have begun by a concerted effort to deflect attention from the administration's mishandling.
Given the attributed source of the first uses (of which I am aware) of the term "chinese flu", that seems almost certainly true.
> but this term was absolutely intended to divide
No, it was intended to evade. That's different. You said it yourself: "deflect".
Why is placing the place of origin on China (the nation), and the blame on the Chinese government, confused with placing the blame on a race?
(Yes, there are bigots and jerks who are looking for an excuse to go get racist on someone. There are some. I'm not sure that we should change our language just to avoid giving them an excuse, though, in the same way that we didn't go to these extremes for H1N1. There may be some damage to some actual people - and let's be clear, people who don't deserve it - but free speech is also a value that I uphold. I don't think we should let bigots and jerks control which words we're allowed to use.
And I've seen you elsewhere cite the Nazis and their statements about the Jews. Well, by that point, it will be time for measures equivalent to what we're doing for CoronaVirus, because the damage will be severe.)