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Comment by grillvogel | Hacker News Reader

when did the spanish flu become the 1918 flu? was it in the past few days?

1918 Flu is a more accurate name and you seem to not have had any trouble with the meaning, so what's the problem?

The problem is that it was being referred to as the Spanish Flu up until some people in the media took offense to Trump's coining of the phrase "Chinese Flu", so Spanish Flu needs to go if we're not wanting to look like hypocrites.

I don't see how striving for consistency by avoiding nation-shaming labels is a "problem". Trying to not be hypocritical is generally viewed as a good thing.

Exactly - it's society going "You're right, that's not cool." then trying to be better. I fully encourage it.

Revising terminology seems to run contrary to a strive for consistency.

Tell that to World War I

Why is this a problem?

Because it confuses people and ostracizes those who are not following along actively. It's like calling water dihydrogen monoxide. Not problematic, just not what it's called.

But languages evolve over time due to societal pressure. Words used a generation or two ago to describe some race are now largely gone, for good reason. When you see someone trying to weaponize a word - and it feels incredibly dishonest to say Trump's insistence on "China Flu" is anything but an attempt to generate an adversary, as he hasn't shown any sort of insistence on using the "right" word for anything before this - it only makes sense to try and react against it.

Trump says China virus, not "China Flu". This is not an influenza strain.

> say Trump's insistence on "China Flu" is anything but an attempt to generate an adversary

Trump is just calling it what everyone called it before WHO decided to call it COVID 19 or nCov-SARS2, or whatever the virus is called according to them. The rest of the media was using Wuhan coronavirus or Chinese coronavirus since December.

Sorry, China virus. So you're telling me instead that the president can't keep up with the modern word choice? Clearly the world and its leaders have moved on from that, but the US is willing to hold diplomatic relations up in an attempt to re-frame the conversation.

https://www.axios.com/wuhan-virus-pompeo-g7-statement-corona...

I wouldn’t blame trump’s blatant racism on some people in the media

Calling it the Chinese Flu because it comes from China is only racist when you move the goal posts to redefine racism as such. There is evidence that this was what happened due to pandemics traditionally being named after where they originated.

You can't move the goal posts without the media being on board with it.

> There is evidence that this was what happened due to pandemics traditionally being named after where they originated.

This is just false, most pandemics are named for where they had their greatest effects, or for really old ones, who wrote about it / was king at the time.

Before modern history, we had no idea where pandemics originated.

What do you think Trump would be calling it if it originated in the US... the "US Flu" or "COVID-19"?

You know 100% why he is calling it the chinese flu. Don't try to be so naive that he is trying to "properly" name it, even though every other person on the planet calls it the scientific name. You know he calls it the chinese flu to distance himself AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE from any responsibility for the effects of it. He blames someone else 100% of the time no matter what. 3+ years into his presidency have you seen how much he blames the obama administration for trumps lack of initial response?

Actually, Trump calling it "Chinese Virus" seems to track exactly with the CCP planting those silly stories about the virus being created by the U.S. military. Now that they seem to be toning that rhetoric down, he has also stopped calling it "Chinese Virus."

I think he calls it that to take a jab at the CCP, and possibly left/media for fun.

> "There is evidence that this was what happened due to pandemics traditionally being named after where they originated."

Related aside, 'Ebola' might have been 'Yambuku' instead, named for the village where the disease was first noticed, but Peter Piot decided to name it after the nearby Ebola River instead, to avoid damning the small village's name.

He definitely didn't name it 1976 Virus though. Oh, and would you look at that -- the precursor to the Ebolavirus we know today was called "Sudan Virus," turns out it's not racist, it's just how these things are named!

Sometimes. Depends. Did it already have a name that everyone was already using and then you went out of your way to call it “China virus”, when your personal brand also just happens to be based on racist dog whistles and stoking xenophobia? Is so, it’s probably racist!

I remember seeing it widely called the 1918 flu when there was a flurry of articles discussing it in November 2018.

It was referred to as either one until very recently. There was recently an attempt to rename this article on Wikipedia, in March 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spanish_flu#1918_flu,_not...

For the record, Spanish flu was not named so because anyone believed it came from Spain, but because, in the midst of WWI, Spain was neutral and the only heavily-affected country that allowed reporting on the severity of the flu.

One hypothesis of its origin was the UK or USA. Maybe you should instead be calling it British flu or American flu.

"Atypical pneumonia associated with Legionella bacterial infection" is also a more accurate name than "Legionnaires' disease", but rewriting the historical nomenclature that way would be confusing and a bit obnoxious, especially if done to make some political point.

And no, using the name "Legionnaires' disease" isn't a slur on the American Legion.

It's sort of a revisionist history thing that's been picking up steam for a while.

I believe it really started gaining traction when the articles and such started going around about how it was called "Spanish Flu" because Spain was a neutral country in WWI and so wasn't suppressing reporting on the pandemic. Current research suggests it was just as bad everywhere and probably originated in America.

I don't terribly mind the change, I guess, since 1918 Flu helps ground it in time.

I think part of the change is also backlash to people calling our current pandemic the Chinese Flu

Perhaps it is to be PC, apparently the Spanish flu didn't originate from Spain (looks like it began in US). Spain was the first country to report on it.

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