Despite that, I think it’s too late to rename this virus. People have called it “coronavirus” for weeks now and the name will likely stick, correct or not.
What's super-weird in all that coronaviruses are already an entire class of viruses that are the second most popular cause of the common cold, behind rhinoviruses:
> "The common cold is a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract. The most commonly implicated virus is a rhinovirus (30–80%), a type of picornavirus with 99 known serotypes. Other commonly implicated viruses include human coronavirus (≈ 15%), influenza viruses (10–15%), adenoviruses (5%)..." [1]
Someone you know probably has a coronavirus right now -- just not the one in the news.
But somehow this basic fact has barely been mentioned in the media.
Seriously, calling the new disease "coronavirus" is as silly as a chef calling their new very specific recipe "soup". Like... you've gotta come up with something more specific...
If a chef came up with a super delicious recipe that was taking the world by storm and happened to be soup... I could see people using the generic encompassing term to identify it. By nature of popularity people would know what you were referring to.
In fact, the only relationship that virus had with Spain is that the press was not censored as in the other European countries of that time (because of their involvement in the Great War).
great, now what happens if another coronavirus epidemic hits? do you still call it "novel coronavirus", because it's novel? do whoever's in charge of naming get their act together and allocate a number in hours rather than weeks?
Novel novel coronavirus. The next one after will be novel novel novel coronavirus. Reminds me of some people I've worked with who insist on long email threads with attached words docs as their "project management" methodology.
Yeah, but the WHO isn't naming things for "people".
Any more than the fact that "people" call things stomach flu when they're not at all influenza related changes that things are called "norovirus" and "rotavirus".
The name is correct but vague, we've had coronavirus spreads before (like SARS) and will have in the future, so it'll be confusing whether we're talking about this one or something else.
