And the Ebola virus is named after a river in Africa, where, apparently, the outbreak originated. Apparently some of these diseases, viruses, etc., get tagged with a geographical name and nobody really cares. Others, however, seem to generate a firestorm of controversy and debate.
Let me give you some historical context.
The Spanish Flu (which is H1N1 for the idiot in this thread who claims H1N1 originated in Mexico) didn't originate in Spain. There is no definitive answer where it began, but the first reported case was in Kansas. That's in the United States.
So why did it get labeled the "Spanish Flu"? There are a couple of reasons for it. First, Spain was one of the few countries that didn't take a side in WWI. As a result, they could report on things with honesty instead of with the manipulation other countries did for propaganda reasons. So Spain was able to publicize the actual numbers being seen impacted the flu. As a result, the rest of the world thought it was something exclusive and/or overwhelmingly happening in Spain, which was false.
Further, in the U.S. at the time, European immigrants from the southern and eastern parts of the continent were looked down upon and discriminated against by Americans and European immigrants from the north and west of that continent. Spain was included in the discriminated group, so labeling it the "Spanish Flu" allowed the discrimination and hate to continue.
Not only were some of the labels inaccurate, but they also resulted in discrimination and hate increasing against people from the regions from those labels.
Years ago, The World Health Organization actually mandated that diseases not be called by a specific region or ethnic group. Why? Well, for one, check out my Spanish Flu example. Spaniards because targets even though it had nothing to do with their country. Another example was the "swine flu." Why is calling it the swine flu bad? Because morons don't understand that these labels are many times not accurate. The "swine flu" was actually started by humans - humans first gave pigs the disease which then came back to humans. What did Egypt do? They killed every single pig in the country, most of which was owned by a Christian group in the country. That crushed the Christian community and economy in Egypt. On top of that, the "swine flu" was being passed from human to human, so blaming it on pigs at that point was useless.
Now, how does calling it the "Chinese Virus" fall along the same lines? What happens when a country's leader places blame on things from minority groups? For instance, if a president scared his citizens that some of the immigrants from another country were criminals, there would be a natural reaction of violence/hate against those immigrants. That happened for the two years after Humpty said it. What happens when a country's leader urges his followers to "rough up" non-violent protesters and promises to pay their legal fees if they do? Well, people are going to listen to the leader and rough up those non-violent protestors. What happens when a president makes numerous disparaging comments and blocks immigration from countries with an overwhelming religious following? His followers will show increased violence/hate against those religious followers. And that happened after Humpty made his comments and orders.
So calling it the "Chinese Virus" does nothing, and it results in useless hate/violence and gives non-Chinese a belief that they are not as susceptible to it ("I've never been to China and I don't know any Chinese people").
