Why we should call it the Wuhan Virus

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
32
1717

Bill Maher is one of my favourite social critics and his show on Sky soho is the best weekly current affairs on the planet.

His latest monologue attacking Identity Politics activists for screaming racism by calling the virus the ‘Wuhan virus’ is a similar argument I’ve been pushing since January…

…Bill’s argument is that Scientists have been calling diseases after where they originate from for a very long time.

This has NEVER been an Identity Politics issue, it was always a public health and economic threat.

Bill’s wider point that China must regulate the wet markets where these virus jumped the species divide is a necessary first step to ensuring this pandemic doesn’t happen again.

It’s not racist to point these things out.

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32 COMMENTS

  1. Well If you really want to be accurate you could call it the Detroit Flu because they had case of it in Detroit a decade ago but no one knew what it was because it did not happen to turn into a pandemic .

    • Ignorant hucksters and snake oil salesmen call it the Wuhan whatever .. https://2175jy450l-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/why-trump-appears-when-you-search-for-idiot-325×183.jpg

      The adults, medical staff, scientists and researchers are not on the Wuhan hoon wagon

      As for wet markets ,,,, who remembers when Mike King visited a factory pig farm here in NZ ??? ,,,The smell, and the screaming of the pigs driven insane at the horror of their existence ,,, Had a dramatic effect of Mike King ,,, We have hell on earth,,,, its called factory farming ,,, here in NZ and around the world.

      At the 135 minute mark of this video we can here some home truths ,,, even though they are talking about the conditions in USA intensive ‘farms’.

      If we all had to visit factory farms ,,,, I bet we would consume less flesh ..

      135 mins … and its probably best not to be eating when digesting the info of our dirty industrial meat
      https://youtu.be/Nd7exbDzU1c

  2. From Cyclone Simon, Spanish flu, we have the Wuhan Virus….

    Also heard that one of the reasons that that WHO were so late in calling the pandemic were that they were frightened of offending China, having cosy meetings with President Xi Jinping and failed to call the pandemic early enough.

    On 28 January WHO was having meetings with President Xi Jinping and downplaying the pandemic while at the same time China was stockpiling PPE from other countries.

    WHO, China leaders discuss next steps in battle against coronavirus outbreak
    https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/28-01-2020-who-china-leaders-discuss-next-steps-in-battle-against-coronavirus-outbreak

    This calls into question of how independent organisations like WHO are.

    The problem is, that many countries wait for the ‘pandemic’ signal from WHO that was left too late and thus countries were unprepared and many more deaths can occur.

    Once the pandemic signal hit, it turns out that medical equipment and supplies were being sent back to China from countries like Australia and stockpiled.

    China stockpiled more than 2 billion surgical masks and essential medical supplies, many of them from Australia, in a global panic buy.
    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/revealed-china-stockpiled-2-billion-face-masks-and-25m-medical-items/news-story/5304e5a5080bd4087e4a9be9de210b97

    Second company sent ‘90 tonnes’ of Australian medical supplies to China
    Exclusive video shows surgical masks at Perth airport being airfreighted to China last month during the peak of the country’s outbreak.
    https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/second-company-sent-90-tonnes-of-australian-medical-supplies-to-china/news-story/be74b7679d7c8cb910d0f34713b2f008

  3. Well, the interesting thing is that people called it the Spanish influenza ( poor Spanish ! ) – when it is now alleged to have developed in Kansas and spread via troops going to WW1…

    Yet when the Spanish King came down with it,.. it was simply their media that first reported on it. So the moniker stuck.

    Well, its obvious that the virus originated in China, but as one poster stated- a large govt run infectious diseases unit was located just 4 or so miles from the ‘wet market’ it is alleged to have come from…

    Another thought is pro western/ democracy med / micro biology students travelling to the USA and being ‘contacted’ .. to later return home and wait for further ‘instructions’… a great way to reintroduce the cold war by mustering anti Chinese sentiment in the west… esp with the stouch going on with the USA and China regards the South China Sea synthetic military strike islands…

    Which would also create an economic reset favouring the west against China.

    Who knows?

    Until the exact origins ( and even possibility’s of human motives) of this virus are ascertained, perhaps the label ‘Wuhan virus’ is a little premature , and is only being used for convenience sake. But seriously , what is the harm of using covid19 or corona virus? It is just as tragic for the people of China as it is for the rest of us, so perhaps encouraging a stigma is not such a wise path to travel down.

  4. It has been standard practice to name new infectious strains after the locale in which they were first discovered. There was a Port Chalmers flu strain some years ago.

  6. Cut it out Martyn! It should named correctly.

    “The American Military Personnel Disease!” Delivered to … Oct 2019 World Military Games.
    Their Navy is riddled with the corona virus!

  7. Hey Martyn, Check out Nigel Latte’s Twitter feed sometime. It seems to have been mysteriously erased between February 5th and February 18th; so I guess it’s not just racists who are stupid. Again.

    In fairness to him, his last post on February 4th is an academic article from Helen Petousis-Harris who is apparently Auckland University’s immunology expert. In it she claims that China is moving “heaven and earth” to halt the coronavirus, and that the greatest danger it poses to the human race is generating xenophobia. I expect she’s probably changed her tune by now too:

    https://www.thebigq.org/2020/02/04/misinfodemic-how-serious-is-the-new-coronavirus-pandemic/

    • Helen Petousis-Harris sounds like another neoliberal trying to keep the neoliberal agenda and China’s road and belt streaming along.

      The woke fears of xenophobia, is what is actually killing people all around the world from the Chinese to US to UK to Indians to Italians to the Spanish at this point in time, when too many world leaders and countries closed their borders too late, while WHO after a nice chat with Xi failed to declare a pandemic while China sucked up the world’s PPE. Virus don’t seem to discriminate on race by the looks of it!

  8. ccp has people all around the world
    when the red dragon calls
    that message is received and activates
    members to serve and sustain the
    health and survival of the ccp
    the red dragon is a magnificent
    beast.
    beautiful and dangerous

  10. According to The Guardian here and
    “Prof Stephen Turner, head of the department of microbiology at Melbourne’s Monash University, says what’s most likely is that virus originated in bats.
    But that’s where his certainty ends, he says.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market
    In other words, no one knows for sure where covid-19 came from.
    Thus, my logical fallacy proximity alarms are going off when I hear the virus referred to as the ‘Wuhan virus’ because it, covertly perhaps, implies that it originated in China and in particular Wuhan.
    I could be forgiven for thinking that weasel words are being used to evade detection.

  11. NO ONE contributing to this blog could seriously claim to know the genesis and origins of Covid-19.

    Probably no one in NZ could.

    “The World Health Organization announced in February 2020 that COVID-19 is the official name of the disease. World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained that CO stands for corona, VI for virus and D for disease, while 19 is for when the outbreak was first identified: 31 December 2019.[235] The name had been chosen to avoid references to a specific geographical location (e.g. China), animal species or group of people, in line with international recommendations for naming aimed at preventing stigmatisation.[236][237] (wikipedia).

    This is a completely rational and honourable approach and deserves to be respected.

    At this point in time, any attempt questioning the ‘neutrality’ of this definition is certainly playing with sinophobe, racist, ethnic or nationalist sentiments, either consciously or unconsciously.

    • Oh sure. No-one listens to Tedros anymore since he’s proved beyond doubt that he’s more interested in sucking Xi’s balls than saving lives.

    • That’s the biggest bullshit response to a pandemic that anyone smart could possibly give. A proper speech in response to The Wuhan Virus would have said that The World Health Organisation truly does represent the world. We have used our clout to lobby all the rich G20 nations and have set aside enough medical resources so we can all fight as one and beat this virus.

      But know, we get this condescending rant on how the woke feel inside. Fuck off moron. The director of WHO should bloody well resign just for failing to do a proper stock take. Anyone who believes this Wuhan is racist can not be on team humanity. And yes, I bloody well know the virus came from bats in god damn Wuhan because that’s what genetic testing says. Unless of course you have much more reliable testing then I’m willing to look it over, moron.

  14. Here’s the deal, Samuel. I’ll boycott China if you’ll start by chucking out everything in your home and on your person that’s “Made in China”. So, let’s do it now, eh? Is that a deal? But no welshing, OK? LOL!

  15. Since when has Bill Maher been an authority on virus naming.
    Unless you bow to TV faces as masters of your thinking.
    Yanks are busy denigrating China but they seem to have a lot to hide.

    The virus is called novel Coronavirus or 2019 novel coronavirus or 2019-nCoV if you like a short name that’s
    internationally recognised.
    Covid19 for the disease.

    There are lots of viruses in Wuhan, New York or Taumarunui on the main trunk line.

    • Martyn, I stopped watching Maher when he became a Hillary apologist. Next you will tell me you get your american news from cnn/msnbc. Totally agree John W.

  18. Bill is scathous so I’m fond preternaturally. I gave him a miss lately because of his lack of understanding about unity for the greater good. Sanders was the only demo-crat in the last 30 or so years. No choice. Except for their self-cock-sucking elite who destroyed their last hope. We NZers remember, preternaturally, solidarity.

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