MPX? Mpox? The struggle to replace ‘monkeypox’ with a name that isn’t racist

latimes.com

5 points·orionion··9 comments

Will we be renaming cowpox too? That's going to make history more fun, "then it was discovered that infection with the disease formerly known as cowpox could confer immunity to the disease formerly known as smallpox in the species formerly known as humans..."

TIL: Monkeys are racist, somehow.

Clownworld :)

If anything, it may be derogative towards monkeys, which would make it (from a human perspective) speciesist, not racist. And then, which monkey species exactly?

But again, clownworld

It really is perplexing that the notion, primarily derived from white people, that keeping it labeled as Monkeypox “could” direct hate towards POC isn’t in itself considered racist.

True, but with all the absurdities these days I really only have one word

Clownworld

Dr Cornelius and Dr Zira are cool, but watch out for Dr Zaius!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes

The monkeys are mad? I don’t get it. If you think that the name monkeypox is racist then you are by definition racist.

WHO virus taxonomy team is currently working on the naming.

https://www.who.int/news/item/12-08-2022-monkeypox--experts-...

Original Monkeypox virus was identified and named in 1958 when naming conventions were different. Currently, the naming best practice tries to avoid including region where the virus/organism is discovered and/or primary/secondary carriers as was the practice earlier.

Eg: The COVID-19 coronavirus is named SARS-COV-2 by WHO. Coronavirus refers to a large family of viruses of which the SARS-COV-2 is one of them.

Who says it is racist?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com