Flu Who
Cidu Bill on Apr 30th 2009
The World Health Organization announced today that, at urging of meat producers, it is officially changing the name of “Swine Flu” to “Influenza A.”
I’m not making this up.
Do they seriously believe that anybody will really start referring to the virus as Influenza A? I’d be shocked if a single news outlet even once uses the new name without at least parenthetically referring to the old name as well.
May 1 update: As of today, neither NPR nor the BBC has gotten the memo: Both continue to refer to “swine flu” (probably because, you know, that’s its name).
Filed in Bill Bickel, WHO, World Health Organization, influenza a, swine flu | 34 responses so far
Charlene Apr 30th 2009 at 09:57 pm 1
It’s no dumber than people refusing to eat pork because they’re scared they’ll get the flu from it. People are losing their jobs from that idiocy.
Cidu Bill Apr 30th 2009 at 10:11 pm 2
True; but however illogical it might have been to call it swine flu to begin with, that ship has already sailed: The world knows it as swine flu, and swine flu it will remain.
As well it should, since if the media does start referring to it exclusively as influenza a, most people will probably think we’re now contending with a second pandemic.
Brent Apr 30th 2009 at 10:15 pm 3
Yeah, I don’t really think it matters too much to WHO if it is still parenthetically called Swine Flu by everyone… just so long as the reason for the name change gets covered as well. That’s the whole point of the exercise… to clear up some of the stupidity (as mentioned in comment #1) that has been going around (spreading much faster than the flu itself). The name change gives the media a reason to talk specifically about that.
S.P. Charles Apr 30th 2009 at 10:20 pm 4
Personally, I find the word “influenza” scarier than the word “flu,” evoking as it does the 1918 epidemic.
Elyrest Apr 30th 2009 at 10:48 pm 5
I remember a swine flu epidemic back in 1976. The authorities said the strain was related to the 1918 influenza pandemic and there were calls for everyone in the country to be vaccinated. Of course there was not enough vaccine for everyone. What ultimately came out of this was that Guillain-Barré syndrome seemed to be caused by the vaccine and more people died from this than the swine flu.
This was the only year I ever had a flu shot (I worked with an at risk group). I got one of the worst cases of flu I have ever had.
Brent Apr 30th 2009 at 11:02 pm 6
S.P. Charles, #4: It should be scarier… the “flu” has been incorrectly attributed to illnesses (a lot of the time it’s food poisoning) that aren’t influenza that the word has lost it’s real impact. Real influenza is a serious disease. Not that this one’s 1918 influenza panic worthy yet… many cases have been described as “mild”, and the scientists managed to catch this one early and get out the word (which should go a long way to limiting the spread).
Elyrest, #5: Not vaccinated, but I also got the 1976 flu. There was a couple days when I was too weak to walk.
tofor Apr 30th 2009 at 11:41 pm 7
It’s ’swine’ because it originally came from pigs in the same way bird flue comes from birds. The difference is, this flue can be spread from person to person, though I heard it cannot be airborne. I am rooting for the more descriptive name of ‘Mexican Flu’
Cidu Bill Apr 30th 2009 at 11:48 pm 8
The problem is, tofor, that sounds like a euphemism for a venereal disease.
Brent May 1st 2009 at 12:34 am 9
Personally, when I hear “Mexican Flu” my first thought is that it’s just another name for Montezuma’s revenge.
furrykef May 1st 2009 at 12:37 am 10
Am I the only one who gets freakin’ sick of these media scares? First SARS, then bird flu, now this… it’s always the same damn thing: you can’t turn around without hearing about it, but hardly anything ever happens. I’d wonder why the media keeps going on about this kind of crap, and why the general public seems to keep eating it up (otherwise the media wouldn’t go on about it). I doubt that doing so really does anything to slow down or stop the disease, and doing that is the only thing that really matters.
- Kef
Elyrest May 1st 2009 at 12:53 am 11
Kef - the media goes on about it because right now there is very little else to engage them. Everybody grasps on to the most recent thing because that is the thing to do - whether it makes any sense or not. The general public always seems primed to panic. Or is that just what they report.
katie May 1st 2009 at 02:09 am 12
I think it’s funny that the WHO is trying to protect the meat industry by doing this when it’s the practices of that very industry (in the US, anyway) that’s being investigated as part of the problem.
deeshay May 1st 2009 at 03:02 am 13
I think it ought to be called “the flu formerly known as swine”.
chuckers May 1st 2009 at 05:40 am 14
Umm…. Isn’t influenza A supposed to be Bird (Avian) flu?
This virus making the rounds it properly called Influenza H1N1.
[later]
Okay, just checked both Wikipedia (as if THAT was the be all and
end all authority on anything) AND the WHO website.
Influenza A does (usually) refer to Avian. This particular strain
is being called Influenza A (H1N1). No real mention of this being
done at the urging of Pork producers. In fact, no reason is given
that I could find in a cursory glance.
Cidu Bill May 1st 2009 at 05:59 am 15
Chuckers, here ya go
chuckers May 1st 2009 at 08:31 am 16
Thanks for that. Maybe if I tried really hard, I could convince
myself that this really isn’t a cause and effect sort of deal, just
some reporters wild supposition and is just a coincidence rather
than the porcine producers mafia at work.
I doubt I will be successful, though.
Daniel J. Drazen May 1st 2009 at 10:17 am 17
Reminds me of conservative attempts to replace the term “suicide bomber” with “homicide bomber.” Probably trying to make it sound less, I don’t know, altruistic or something. I never did get that. Bombing is pretty heinous across the board, whether you take yourself out in the process or not.
Besides, “kamikaze” was already taken.
And for the record, I don’t even eat pork products, so I don’t care!
Brian May 1st 2009 at 11:34 am 18
What about the “after pearls” flu? Or the “b’deep-b’deep-b’deep-that’s-all-folks!” flu? Or just call it “SOME FLU”.
jjmcgaffey May 1st 2009 at 11:44 am 19
I love the word/phrase ‘viral influenza’ (which is the proper name of this disease - any of these diseases). Way back when they were just starting germ theory, they found that some stuff-that-made-people-sick couldn’t be filtered out like bacteria (normal germs), so they called those things that they couldn’t really locate ‘filterable viruses’ - that is, poisons (virus is related to virulent) that their best efforts couldn’t locate or remove from a sample. So ‘viral influenza’ means ‘under the influence of invisible evil things’ - demonic possession!
I’ve had the flu a couple times in my life - sounds like a good description to me.
padraig May 1st 2009 at 11:55 am 20
This also reminds me of the conflict over “Unabomer” vs. “UnabomBer”. I think I got those right. For some reason the official code name did not include the second “b” in “bomb,” possibly because Ted K. miswrote it that way at some point. Most media called him the “Unabomber” because it made more sense. The sticklers dropped the “b” so they could feel superior, but the net result was everyone thought they couldn’t spell.
So just like this one, the people using the official name of “Flu A” will be the people that nobody understands. GREAT communication strategy.
Cidu Bill May 1st 2009 at 12:11 pm 21
The FBI called the unknown bomber UNABOM, for UNiversity and Airline BOMber - the BOM, in other words being shorthand for bomber (or possibly bombers). So Unabomer was never actually correct, and the sticklers of which you speak were misguided..
Unabomber was a perfectly legitimate evolution of the name, just as the .44 Caliber Killer became Son of Sam.
Brian May 1st 2009 at 02:00 pm 22
I miss the Unabomber. If he’d just kept his mouth shut, he’d still be filthy in his filthy cabin, wreaking the occasional havoc. He could’ve published his manifesto posthumously, but no! he needed the glory!!
Brent May 1st 2009 at 02:46 pm 23
#10, furrykef: It’s a hazard of 24 hour news. Just remember that a lot of people will only tune into news for a couple minutes a day and will want to hear about it… it your news exposure is longer than that, you need to learn to live with the way news fixates on things. Checking in once a day to see if things have actually gotten serious (they haven’t) is good enough… after that I just skip over flu articles or change the channel.
#14, chuckers: Today they do seem to be using H1N1 (the subtype) almost exclusively in the news (although my exposure was limited to a few minutes of CNN this morning (see above)). Of course, the unique identifier is simply too long to actually bother using in reports (in addition to type and subtype you need location of origin, year, and the assigned serial number).
The Ploughman May 1st 2009 at 03:54 pm 24
For those who are sick of Flu Scare, we should be back around to Missing Teenager Mystery pretty soon. If we’re lucky, we’ll get Child Abduction Epidemic out of the way before Stores Report _____ Sales During Holidays.
Brian May 1st 2009 at 04:25 pm 25
And what about the ever-popular, the perennial pedophile/child molester story, Ploughman?
Morris Keesan May 1st 2009 at 05:27 pm 26
And, in a related story, the pork farmers are taking extra precautions to keep their herds from catching virus from people.
The Ploughman May 1st 2009 at 05:58 pm 27
Brian, we’ll squeeze it in just before Americans Can’t Find Anything On A Map Anymore.
Michael Brown May 1st 2009 at 06:17 pm 28
As Chuckers noted, its now being refered to as the H1N1 flu.
What I want to know is what happened to the bird flu pandemic that everyone was so worried about a couple of years ago? It never happened, and no one seems to be mentioned in with the current swine flu (sorry, H1N1 flu) panic.
eeyore19 May 1st 2009 at 06:40 pm 29
Reminds me of a story that was in the news a few weeks back about PETA wanting the band Pet Shop Boys to rename themselves “Rescue Shelter Boys.” The band politely declined.
Soup Dragon May 3rd 2009 at 05:03 pm 30
It’s been done before. HIV was called HTLV-III in the early days after it’s discovery.
Cidu Bill May 3rd 2009 at 05:15 pm 31
True enough, Soup — but once something’s in the news 24/7, it’s pretty much too late to change its name in any meaningful way. Scientists have been trying for many years to get the public accustomed to “global climate change” as opposed to “global warming,” and they do seem to be making some very slow progress. But swine flu isn’t going to be around long enough for that.
LLL May 4th 2009 at 11:30 am 32
This tactic reminds me of when there was hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and non-A non-B hepatitis. It was a good decade or two before the medical establishment went with hepatitis C rather than non-A non-B.
kat May 9th 2009 at 07:14 pm 33
They can’t call it swine flu anymore because of concern for pigs. I think I heard that in some other country, they started killing pigs because of fear they would carry the disease.
Kamino Neko May 9th 2009 at 08:56 pm 34
Quite the contrary, actually. The possibility of a cross-pollination of H1N1 and H5N1 is one of the big concerns right now, since H1N1 is more virulent, but H5N1 is more lethal in humans.