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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Bill Maher has an amusing monologue on that topic [1]. I don't think it is wrong to call it the Wuhan virus, and if the Chinese don't want the bad publicity associated with the virus, they should do something about these wet markets.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfDwc2G2_8

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Hilariously it was the CCP that pushed the Wuhan virus name in the first place, instead of SARS-like which was what the doctors were calling it, so as to not appear incompetent for having repeated the mistakes of SARS and in order to distance themselves and make sure it's the local baeurucrats that take the blunt of the heat.

Then they went on claiming everything was good again, 0 new cases nationally, so the head honchos could take credit for showing leadership and whatnot. Now they're blaming new cases on foreigners, especially Africans, most of whom never even left the country since this whole ordeal started both to stoke nationalism + rally around the flag effect and so as to evade responsibility for not actually having stopped it yet.

On the other hand we did not call the "Swine Flu" the "North American flu"

It’s called Mexican flu in Dutch.

Watch the video, he cites loads of examples.

This and similar monologues do get one important things wrong. The big one on the list - Spanish Flu - likely didn't come from Spain [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Hypotheses_a...

I think this is completely missing the point. I believe it was named the Spanish flu as this is where it was first reported. That we learned later on that it originated from somewhere else is completely irrelevant. The point is that it was named after where it was believed to be first observed.

The same Bill Maher who wanted a major recession to bring down Trump?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3SjtG5lwOI

Maybe we should stop listening to these people?

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