WHO moves to give monkeypox new name

[NewYorkExpress]

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105188732/monkeypox-new-name-who-world-health

Monkeypox is poised to get a new name, the World Health Organization says, after scientists recently criticized the current name as "discriminatory and stigmatizing." The researchers say it's also inaccurate to name versions of the virus after parts of Africa.

The WHO is working with experts "on changing the name of monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing on the outbreak on Tuesday.

Tedros is also calling an emergency meeting next week to discuss the virus, which he says is not behaving the way it has in the past.

A group of 29 biologists and other researchers issued a public call for a new nomenclature around monkeypox last week on the virological.org website. They said the current international outbreak "has been detected without a clear link to Africa."

Despite "growing evidence that the most likely scenario is that cross-continent, cryptic human transmission has been ongoing for longer than previously thought," the scientists said, a public narrative persists in suggesting the current outbreak is linked to Africa, West Africa or Nigeria. That builds on an existing stigma, they said.


"The most obvious manifestation of this is the use of photos of African patients to depict the pox lesions in mainstream media in the global north," the researchers said.

The paper's authors include Ahmed Ogwell, deputy director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than a dozen infectious disease experts in the U.S. and Europe.

As for what the virus should be called, the scientists suggest starting with hMPXV, to denote the human version of the monkeypox virus. Rather than geographic locations, they say, letters and numbers should be used, based on order of discovery. In that system, the lineage behind the current international outbreak would be dubbed B.1.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I haven’t seen any linkage of the virus or the current outbreak to Africa when it’s been discussed online and in the media, which has been very little overall. I worry that all this will concretely do is confuse people.

[Pericles]

Monkeypox doesn't sound that serious and probably isn't that scientifically accurate, like how the original name 'coronavirus' described a type of disease not the specific disease that ruined the last two years.

[It’s so Joever]

Disagree, Monkeypox is an easy to understand name that accurately links it with smallpox.

[Sir Mohamed]

My proposal: Covid-22.

[CumbrianLefty]

Monkeypox doesn't sound that serious and probably isn't that scientifically accurate, like how the original name 'coronavirus' described a type of disease not the specific disease that ruined the last two years.

But isn't that "specific disease" actually a type of coronavirus? Seems fair enough to me if so.

[Conservatopia]

Mfw monkeys have more lobbying power at the WHO than people do.

[dead0man]

Did the egg heads in charge really think racists were sitting around giggling because Monkeypox is from Africa and is mostly affecting Africans and "monkey" has been used as an insult for black people before?  'cause I guarantee more people are doing that now because of this story than were doing it before.

[Del Tachi]

Woke WHO is the worst WHO

[DaleCooper]

This is just going to confuse people and by extent lead to less awareness and understanding of this disease, which is counter to what I thought the WHO's goal was supposed to be.

[Hash]

The WHO renames stuff about as often as the French right renames itself. And just like the French right over the past decade, they're also not very good at doing what they're supposed to do.

[BlueSwan]

Oh yes, hMPXV will surely catch on. Just rolls off the tongue.

Seriously, this is such a stupid timeline.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Because everyone is going to listen to these people.

https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152