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Re:Now Monkeypox by ilamont on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:01PM (#31482615)
Even if COVID-19 did not happen, this would still get a lot of play because of the name which lends itself to sensationalism and fear. Monkeypox, flesh-eating bacteria, mad cow disease ... these are the things that get played up, while Clostridium difficile, Shigella, and other infectious diseases with obscure names mostly get a collective shrug.
Re:Now Monkeypox by guerrilla on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:06PM (#31482726)
Wait wait wait, are you sure it's not the other way around? That those things don't get those names because they're played up? Monkeypox, flesh-eating bacteria, mad cow disease all have boring scientific names but these are the names the media uses to play them up!
Re:Now Monkeypox by ilamont on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:13PM (#31482857)
I don't know how these names are assigned or created, but regardless when you have something like "Mad Cow Disease" instead of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy it's more likely to be covered and even sensationalized by mainstream media.

I think some scientists have recognized this, after such terms caused stigma and misplaced concern. "Crack baby" was one of them:

The term “crack baby” is an urban legend masquerading as a medical diagnosis. It is a label that stigmatizes, marginalizes and endangers children and their mothers who are desperately in need of care. Born from the combination of an ongoing crisis in urban health care and draconian zero-tolerance drug policies, the crack-baby myth thrives even though it has no basis in science.

Due to a combination of insufficient data and public fears that followed the crack cocaine epidemic of the mid-1980s, crack was alleged to be harmful to the cognitive and emotional development of children. Sensational news stories warned of the damage that crack would inflict on a generation of children and thus on society in general. A few scientists went beyond the data from incomplete research and contributed to the hype with inaccurate comments.

https://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2003-04/03-...

Re:Now Monkeypox by guerrilla on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:18PM (#31482930)
> I don't know how these names are assigned or created, but regardless when you have something like "Mad Cow Disease" instead of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy it's more likely to be covered and even sensationalized by mainstream media.

I don't think you've established this though. It may be more likely to be covered for entirely unrelated reasons and have that name as a consequence or coincidence. You're confusing correlation with causation.

> The term “crack baby” is an urban legend masquerading as a medical diagnosis

There are thousands of these and the media doesn't play up let alone care about most of them.

Re:Now Monkeypox by aaronblohowiak on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:11PM (#31482805)
mad cow / cjd / prion disease is in a different league from all the others you mentioned; there's very little recourse and it is scary how difficult it is to sterilize anything that may have been exposed.
Re:Now Monkeypox by failedengineer on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:42PM (#31483285)
and there's no way of knowing if you have prions in your body, and when your brain will turn to mush. CJD is nightmare fuel.
Re:Now Monkeypox by joshspankit on Monday May 23, 2022 @11:49PM (#31487771)
Don‘t forget bird flu and swine flu