Countries push back against being associated with variants, new system may be coming soon
It is one thing to hear a foreign country be connected to the name of a virus, it’s another thing when it’s your country. It feels personal. Last week, many Thais were incensed to have their country associated with a Covid variant. Likewise, the Indian government has called for having all references to the “Indian Variant” scrubbed from social media. They say it is not scientifically accurate and gives their country a negative connotation.
Viruses and variants are commonly named using Pango, which takes hundreds of lineages to show the evolution of the virus through each new outbreak. Lineages are ascribed to significant mutations and epidemiological events, i.g., the virus taking a trip to a different country. It’s a system that is used worldwide, using a code of letters and numbers.
However, this complex system of letters and numbers can be a mouthful to say, so a shorthand has been developed where people refer to the variant by the country it was first detected in.
The World Health Organization has cautioned against this shortcut. This would be in line with the 2015 guideline on naming a human infectious disease. A guideline that is wary about using a signifier such as a specific city, country, or continent, or another location. Albeit, some diseases are still immutably linked to a location, such as the Spanish Flu or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.
Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Who scientist, says that an overhaul is coming to the naming of a virus that will be akin to the way tropical storms are named. The organization hopes this will decrease stigmatization and motivate countries to be more transparent with sequencing results, thus making it easier for the layperson to grasp.
SOURCE: Thai PBS
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China was also panicked into spending billions denying it had a Covid outbreak at all and billions more to change the name of Wuhan Virus to the lily white WHO conviction of Covid 19. Scientists have a price it seems….what does that say about climate change?
If every country has a variant, no country has a variant. Stop the racism and keep it mutating
Old news. The decision to name the variants after the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc) has already been announced by the WHO, and names allocated to variants (the British variant is Alpha).
To be clear – it’s only ok to name a variant after a country when the variant comes from a country where white people live. The fact that Thai were “incensed” is just typical of the prideful, easily-offended Thais. But not surprising given the volume of nationalistic propaganda they are bombarded with and the personality cult status of various figure heads.
Obviously the ploy of renaming it over and over is to eventually make people forget where it actually originated, and who’s ultimately and solely responsible.
Name it how you want. In the end, it’ll always be the China virus.
Wu-flu
Pommy-rona
Curryvid 19
Oh, darn. I guess my state back in the US won’t get any attention from the next plague if it originates there. Life sucks sometimes. 555
This is all misdirection = it doesn’t matter if it’s called r2d2
It is a virus and they mutate (full stop)
They mutate into a variant because they are trying to protect themselves = hence the need for a flu shot every year
When you take a vaccine then the virus tries to evade it and protect itself and only to come back in a different form months later
It’s trying to protect it self from your immune system, not from the vaccine.