Winter Rant

And the underlying attitudes at play.

Naming something that brings pain, misery and death — like a disease — will always invite controversy. The recent COVID-19 pandemic and its naming have certainly caused consternation, across the world.

I decided to explore and understand why the names “Chinese Virus” or “Wuhan Virus” have gained popularity with many folks around the world when referring to COVID-19 that is plaguing the world in 2020. In my exploration, I found various instances where diseases were named after places and people with regular frequency, which I try to list out in this write-up, the best I can.

However, at the heart of this write-up, I lay out my own argument and analysis that suggests that there a subtle discrimination and bigotry at play that belies associating the name of a disease with a place or person — the discrimination against the ill and disease-stricken.

I end this write-up with a simple set of thoughts around why calling COVID-19 the “Chinese” or “Wuhan” virus is moronic. Just as it might be to call it the “Old People” virus — because it does afflict people below the age of 55. Perhaps most importantly, calling this disease COVID-19 is the right idea — which is the glimmer of hope that I eventually leave you with.

But first, a thought exercise. Imagine having a disease named after you. Now imagine that people know that name by means of knowing about the disease, more than through knowing you, or of you. Now imagine it being a popular, well known disease that has plagued the entire planet.

It stings. Sometimes a bit, often times a lot. But it does sting. To say that it does not, is just a flat out lie. It is a disease after all — it causes grief, discomfort, and death. What social entity likes being associated with grief, discomfort, death? (There are a few, but such entities are also suffering from a different variety of problems that will require many, many essays, articles and analyses.)

Despite such a clear negative connotation with having your name associated with a disease — not a sweet dish or a surgical procedure —having diseases named after people, places, animals, cultures, and societies is more commonplace than I would have expected it to be. W.H.O. has a whole article that outlines the best practices when naming diseases. And they are not shy about calling out past instances where humanity has liberally associated diseases with people, places, animals, and societies. Sensitivities be damned.

A lot of such names of course come not from scientists or doctors themselves, but from people who might be dealing with the everyday consequences of the disease(s). For people going about their daily life, any disease is an annoyance. As someone who has suffered from chronic, but mild asthma, I should know. Falling ill, even from the common cold or a simple sore throat is an annoyance, at minimum — and often all-out angst.

When dealing with such an annoyance, it is common to find something or someone to blame. You cannot see the disease even if it is ravaging your body and/or lifestyle, so blaming it does not do you much good. More importantly, you cannot cause the disease any harm — if you could, it would not be an annoyance. So you turn towards something that you can blame, and hurt.

Naming a disease by a person or place is perhaps the longest standing form of name-calling. It also has the profound effect of targeting your anger towards something that you can hurt. Calling out the root of any evil always does feel good. “You have to be able to name your enemy, to fight it” — is what I keep hearing.

But people and places are not making you ill — the pathogen is. Environments give life and way to those pathogens, and people and places play major roles there. But simply naming a pathogen after a certain people or places is not helpful. Such name-calling is not going to cure the ill, nor is it going to help us better understand the nature, spread and potential ways of fighting and curing the disease itself. It might make *some* people feel better about it. But like most name-calling, it is an act of fecklessness, and often helplessness.

Consider the long list of diseases that were incorrectly or at least meaninglessly named for geographic regions and are in use by those names even today:

1. Spanish Flu — Did you know that the disease did not originate in Spain? The only reason it got labeled as such was because Spain was the only country not torn apart by a World War, and still had a semblance of free press that reported on the disease. The disease spread from war-torn France to Spain. And the disease was already spreading in the U.S. for two months before that where the authorities and leader chose to suppress information about it. Shifting blame on Spain that seemed like the only country that was reporting about it was political opportunism of the worst kind at a global stage.
2. M.E.R.S. aka Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome — Did you know that M.E.R.S. actually has afflicted people from nearly 26 countries in the world? Yes, the country most impacted was Saudi Arabia. However, did you know that it was South Korea that had the second most number of cases? It spread there due to folks who visited the countries from the Middle East, but what good does that do in fighting the disease itself? If the disease can spread beyond the Middle East, what good does it do me, or anyone to know that it started in the Middle East? I am typically not keen in a geography lesson, but first in a biology lesson when I want to understand a thing or two about any disease — the geography comes later, if at all.
3. Ebola Virus Disease — This naming was particularly unfortunate. According to its Wikipedia article, I was surprised to learn that when the virus first broke out in 1976, it did so at two simultaneous locations: “one in Nzara (a town in South Sudan) and the other in Yambuku (Democratic Republic of the Congo), a village near the Ebola River.” So I am guessing that someone flipped a coin and called it the Ebola Virus. We very well might have been calling it the “Nzara Virus” or the “Sudan Virus”.
4. Legionnaires’ disease is a water borne illness that effects the respiratory system and is classified as an atypical form of pneumonia. But as clearly indicated by its name, knowing that it first broke out at a 1976 American Legion convention in Philadelphia is the kind of must-have bit of trivia I would need to understand the disease better.
5. Zika virus was first located in the Zika forest of Uganda, and I am sure the people of Brazil cared about that when a recent outbreak of Zika impacted new-born babies there.
6. Lyme Disease —The people of Lyme and Old Lyme, Connecticut, I am sure, are thrilled to have a disease bear their towns’ name. It matters that the disease was identified there matters, because … ? Let me clear that up — it does not matter.

The list above was that of popular diseases. Reading up on “Geographic eponyms: A history of geography in medicine” or “Histories of Medical Geography” reveals a particularly nasty, lesser known list of diseases and afflictions that have geo-tags embedded in their names.

The list of diseases named for people is particularly stunning and long. Many such diseases were named after the scientists who discovered the diseases themselves. It is worth noting that this seemed to be a practice back in the 19th century, with little acceptance in the 20th and 21st century. Was it a badge of honor for Alzheimer and Huntington to have a disease named after them, just because they found it first? I do not know. I do know that I hope no doctor or scientist named Palepu ever has a disease named after him- or herself. I shudder at the sentence that might read something like, “The patient is suffering from Palepu’s Disease.” Damn!

What has such name-calling achieved? It is a collective shaming and humiliation of people and regions. I think a better use of a name would be to include the causes of the disease in its name. What good will shaming people and geographies do?

Naming a disease after people, places, or even animals, is an act of societal bullying that has somehow found wide-spread acceptance. Hypocrisy is wide-spread and easy to find, but this from of globally accepted bullying got me thinking: why has it been acceptable, and continues to be acceptable this ubiquitously? With so little resistance? For something that is equal-parts malign and ineffective at its basis?

Answer sadly led me towards an assertion that I could only hold-off for so long. To me, the following assertion perfectly explains and answers my questions above. But full disclaimer: this assertion is based on personal experience.

Discrimination against the ill, is perhaps the original and most certainly one of the oldest forms of bigotry. And I am comfortable in saying that it continues to this day. I am not comfortable that it happens — on the contrary, I abhor discrimination against the ill with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. I am instead comfortable in making that claim as if it were a fact, because it is. It is a fact that people are quick to discriminate against those who are ill, or present any form of bodily ailments — and notice my usage of present tense: people are quick to discriminate.

Such discrimination made sense back in the middle ages, when humanity did not have the microscope, or had little understanding of how microbes function.

Indiscriminately weeding out people who presented with signs of illness was likely the best way to ensure the survival of the village or country when you were not equipped with science and knowledge (science being the means of obtaining and establishing knowledge). Casting aside the weak and helpless in the face of disease was likely the most prudent thing you could do from a public policy standpoint, especially when the state-of-the-art technology suggested that you build houses with straw and stone.

What excuse do we have today?

With the advent of the microscope, which led to ground-breaking discoveries and science, we do not have to run away from diseases. We can fight them, head-on. We can effectively, and in a (literal) death-defying pace, understand the root cause of a disease, and the pathogen that causes a disease and arrive at well thought-out means of fighting the spread and eventually the disease itself.

During the Ebola outbreak back in 2014–2016, it was strange to see how everyone’s first reaction was to block travel from West Africa. What ultimately led to that outbreak’s timely containment was perhaps a global response to mobilize an army of doctors, scientists and the actual army itself to West Africa in order to contain the spread and fight EVD head-on.

An ostrich-like approach to such disease outbreaks is what leads to global lock-downs becoming medically necessary — like it has happened in the case of COVID-19.

Call it what you want but the public health management around the spread of COVID-19 was the textbook definition of being simultaneously stupid, pathetic and authoritarian (some would argue that authoritarian is stupid and pathetic, and will find little objections from me). Governments and public officials on the frontlines of this disease — China and US more so than others — did everything they could to obfuscate, lie about, and ignore the spread of COVID-19.

Humanity’s collective inclination to ignore a disease, and discriminate against those who were afflicted by it was on full display in 2020. “It is China’s problem” … “This is just regular flu season, it will be over pretty soon.” … “The summer heat will burn it up” … “Apple’s factories are coming back online in a couple of weeks, it will be fine.”

We were literally more concerned about the launch and manufacturing of the newer iPhone than we were about combating a deadly virus, even though we had the tools to do so effectively. I shudder to think of the ramifications had this virus been as potent as the Ebola virus — luckily it was not.

We were more busy calling it the “Chinese” virus or the “Wuhan” virus as if it would not effect people outside China and Wuhan. It did. Very much so.

Humanity has become comfortable with the notion of name-calling when it comes to a disease, instead of fighting it. Such discrimination allows us to be complacent — it is after all not “our” problem.

It won’t effect “me”, or the “people around me”, but only “them”, or the “others” — is how this form of discrimination sets root. “Not my problem,” is something we say to ourselves, in an effort to ignore the possibility that we might be the afflicted sooner or later. Folks often follow this chain of thought (if we want to call it that) by enumerating all the differences between “us” and “them” to show why “we” won’t contract “their” illness. It is a subtle form of bigotry that is not based in fear, but in wishful thinking — the thinking that “we” are “better”, and “superior” than “them”.

Let me repeat myself: this from of discrimination — and it is discrimination — does not emanate out of fear. Fear is an afterthought in such discussions. Fear sets in when the death toll numbers become part of the local daily news bulletin — and that takes time.

People were afraid of disease in centuries past because they did not understand it. Discrimination born out of fear is understandable — I would get that.

Today however, disease-based discrimination is no longer based on fear, because we have the science and knowledge to fight threats known and unknown — and people know this. But modern societies the world over tend to discriminate against the ill as a reflex reaction, on an sense of superiority — and not out of fear.

Above all, the lack of empathy towards the sick and ill is likely the root-cause of any disease-based discrimination. Or perhaps something else that is fundamentally flawed in how humans are, as a being. Regardless, humans discriminate against others who are unwell, when they do not need to. And that leads to unfortunate consequences. It does not need to be this way.

Humanity has course corrected when it comes to naming diseases in the past. The most striking example that I can think of is the renaming of GRID to AIDS. Gay-related Immune Deficiency was the classic example of a disease name that was rooted in discrimination against a class of people — in that case homosexuals. That name was also a reflection of a poor understanding of the underlying disease. The colloquial names were even more insidious — “Gay Cancer” or “Gay Plague”. It also reflected the attitude and thinking that it won’t effect heterosexuals.

That illusion lasted only so long. Stories that we tell ourselves about illness which is not based on sound science, and instead on a mere feeling of superiority do not tend to serve anyone.

AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, as a name, reflects the nature of the disease a lot better. And it dispels the myth that it effects only a certain class of people — it can effect anyone. The underlying virus — HIV — reflects the fundamental effect of contracting the virus: it weakens and breaks down the human immune system.

Such a simple change in name allowed Governments and organizations the world over to come together and fight this disease to which we do not have a cure. But by correctly recognizing the pathogen, and appropriately naming it, we were able to put aside differences and work on solutions. That change, was long and for many, painful. And the path to finding a cure lies ahead, still. But the disease is manageable today, and contracting it does not necessarily imply a death sentence. Would such progress be possible if politicians, scientists and leaders allowed the name “G.R.I.D.” to persist? (hint: No.)

By the same token, I think we got the official name of the novel corona virus just right: COVID-19 — it stands for COrona VIrus Disease 2019. It started its spread in 2019. As such, it is an easy way for us to remember that humanity started encountering a new from of corona virus in 2019 — different from SARS and MERS before.

Calling it the “Wuhan” Virus or “Chinese” Virus is stupid given how it has effected the entire world. Equally stupid would be calling it “Old People” Virus, on the assumption that it impacts elderly people more than most others. This name would be particularly idiotic given how many young adults (frat kids) who fell ill and some even died from COVID-19 after attending Spring Break 2020 in Florida.

I will end for now by saying this: Humanity’s ability to change in the face of outright mistakes, and to get such things right with more recent cases has a track record for sure. COVID-19’s name serves as hopeful instance. The track record maybe thin, but it exists, and it is a positive one. And we will ignore that track record, and choose not to adhere to it, at our own peril — especially when it comes diseases.