A Note On COVID

Unpopular opinion.

We should just call COVID19 the Wuhan Virus already, and the variants similarly (or at least stop kicking up a fuss about this). It did start in Wuhan, many disease outbreaks have already been named after the place they originated in, we're doing that with many covid variants presently, it has a nicer ring to it, and only idiots would think that the ordinary residents of Wuhan made the virus (similar to the idiots who think that Indians made the Indian variant (hOw dArE tHeY!) of covid19) because of the name.

Nomenclature is almost irrelevant, because even with the WHO being successfully wrangled into giving the virus an oddly detached name, incidents of racist attacks against Chinese origin people outside of China still occurred. Just how despite many governments officially not calling the B.1.617 variant 'Indian', and the Indian government itself condemning the nomenclature, racist attacks continue against Indians. Heck, there's no dearth of coconuts in India itself trying to portray the use of the term 'Indian variant' as an example of how our government has humiliated us globally - cheap political statements, basically - despite the fact that every notable variant preceding this one was already being identified colloquially with the name of the country they were first found in, and were all variants of equal concern.

Basically, a$$holes will be a$$holes, they don't need any incentives. What making a fuss about the nomenclature does, however, is simply give the world bodies and governments a chance to obfuscate the main issues of virus origin and nature.

UPDATE: Something else occurred to me. After seeing how media channels have been rallied to focus solely on China now, I take this all back. There are clearly more actors involved, and any name like the Wuhan Virus will simply cement in the minds of the average person that China is behind everything, even though nothing is fully out in the open yet. Ditto in case of the variants. There's much, much more to this than meets the eye, looking at the series of denials, counter-accusations and the silence and obedience of media for the last 1.5 years.