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Comment by ourmandave | Hacker News Reader

It's now officially named COVID-19 by the WHO.

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...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold

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.

Well, sure, except for the fact that we all know what soup is and a miniscule fraction of us had ever heard the word coronavirus a month ago.

It would be more like calling this new super delicious soup that was world changing: The Soup

It's to help coordinate a cure and containment if everyone (e.g. researchers, doctors, public officials, reporters.) knows it by one official name.

Also COVID-19 is neutral, so it doesn't generate negative bias like the Spanish Flu. (Which didn't originate in Spain.)

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).

Its actually been novel coronavirus, since day one.

Which is not any less ambiguous.

nCOV-2019 seems okay.

References to SARS in Hong Kong news were often accompanied with references with 2003, the year of the outbreak.

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.

When the string of Re:Re:Re:Fwd:Re:Re: reach the line width of your email client you start a new thread.

People have been calling it coronavirus since day one.

Not the epidemiologists, because "coronavirus" is way too vague.

People. Not every person. Not epidemiologists specifically, obviously.

But the name has now stuck.

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".

People without any knowledge of the topic, you mean.

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.

COVID-19 is the name of the disease caused by the virus, which is known as SARS-CoV-2.

Agreed. If this gets big, any mention of pre-2019 coronavirus will have to be qualified with "No, not that coronavirus."

People in Singapore, at least among my circles, still find it easier to refer to it colloquially as the "Wuhan virus".

Not if journalists uniformly switch over.

I guess we’ll keep calling it the coronavirus in casual conversation.

I’m not sure if there’s a difference between calling it Ncov-2019 or COVID-2019 :/

It's easier to pronounce COVID.

My actual objection is that COVID is close to "corvid"

If you do find yourself or someone you love infected with corvids, I can, if nothing else, guarantee a very high karma HN post for you if nothing else. HN loves corvids.

Mostly I don't want people blaming corvids for this. They've already got enough trouble with West Nile.

I suspect that anyone who knows the scientific term "corvid" would know enough not to be confused.

\enkov\ vs \kouvid\ is splitting hairs...

Maybe it's nee-kov?

It's unclear, that makes it bad.

nCoV-2019 is the virus and COVID-2019 is the disease.

SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus and COVID-19 is the name of the disease it causes.

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