India Asks Social Media Firms To Remove References To 'Indian Variant' of Covid (reuters.com) 198
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: India's information technology (IT) ministry has written to all social media companies asking them to take down any content that refers to an "Indian variant" of the coronavirus, according to a letter issued on Friday which was seen by Reuters.
The World Health Organization said on May 11 that the coronavirus variant B.1.617, first identified in India last year, was being classified as a variant of global concern.
The Indian government a day later issued a statement saying media reports using the term "Indian Variant" were without any basis, saying the WHO had classified the variant as just B.1.617.
In a letter to social media companies on Friday, the IT ministry asked the companies to "remove all the content" that names or implies "Indian variant" of the coronavirus.
"This is completely FALSE. There is no such variant of Covid-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO). WHO has not associated the term 'Indian Variant' with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in any of its reports," stated the letter, which is not public.
A senior Indian government source told Reuters the notice was issued to send a message "loud and clear" that such mentions of "Indian variant" spread miscommunication and hurt the country's image.
The World Health Organization said on May 11 that the coronavirus variant B.1.617, first identified in India last year, was being classified as a variant of global concern.
The Indian government a day later issued a statement saying media reports using the term "Indian Variant" were without any basis, saying the WHO had classified the variant as just B.1.617.
In a letter to social media companies on Friday, the IT ministry asked the companies to "remove all the content" that names or implies "Indian variant" of the coronavirus.
"This is completely FALSE. There is no such variant of Covid-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO). WHO has not associated the term 'Indian Variant' with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in any of its reports," stated the letter, which is not public.
A senior Indian government source told Reuters the notice was issued to send a message "loud and clear" that such mentions of "Indian variant" spread miscommunication and hurt the country's image.
what about the Singapore variant? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what about the Singapore variant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless it came from China, in which case you're an evil bigot for noticing.
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Spanish neutrality WW1 (Score:5, Informative)
>> The Spanish flu was thus named because ***IT WAS SEEN*** as particularly prevalent in Spain...
Complex situation. "Spanish Flu" was worldwide, hitting Europe hardest. Remember that this was in the midst of World War One. Censorship was *DAMN* strong. There was no commercial radio, or internet, or long-distance phone network. Censoring newspapers was sufficient. For morale reasons, the military combatants in WW1 downplayed the flu in their media.
Spain was neutral, and had no reason to censor reports about the flu. Since Spain was the only country ***OPENLY REPORTING THE FLU*** it was seen as Spanish-based, even though it was worldwide.
Re:what about the Singapore variant? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well of it did, lets not forget China outnumbers the west by 2 to 1, so its hardly a shock a large number of outbreasks come from there,its a numbers game.
The previous one came from the USA but the same people aren't clamoring to call it the "America Virus":
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandem... [cdc.gov]
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It is perfectly obvious to anyone who follows the statistics that Covid was specifically manufactured to kill Anti-Vaxxers, and, by implication Trump voters.
I blame the Musicians' Union.
The Prince mutants (Score:2)
oh, that's just rich (Score:4, Insightful)
lately on YT, there has been a channel popping up called WIO (world is one, I think). comes from india and has a clearly indian view on things.
they ONLY refer to covid as 'the wuhan virus'. 100% of the time. reminds me, quite in a BAD way, of the orange idiot who kept insisting on it being the 'china virus'.
how can india call it wuhan-virus and yet want its own country name removed from a variant that is very clearly from india.
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In other news, the Cortes Generales has passed legislation insisting the 1918 flu pandemic be correctly named as such, and the African National Congress demands "Second Plague Pandemic" is the correct term for the pandemic of 1347-51. ("Bubonic Plague" is also deemed acceptable.)
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The 1347 plague originated in East Asia, not Africa.
The first recorded outbreak in Europe was in the port city of Kaffa in Crimea.
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Re:oh, that's just rich (Score:5, Insightful)
When did China *ever* claim the virus was found first anywhere else than Wuhan?
The Orange idiot did it because his entire way of politics is about blaming people (other than himself) for problems rather than fixing them. Better to imply China did "something" that caused a pandemic than to tell people to wear masks for a bit and social distance until the virus goes away, because the latter would be taking responsibility and doing what you can to solve a real problem, whereas the first means you can ignore it and, in your own mind, never get blamed.
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Re: oh, that's just rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how easily this virus spreads, it's hard to square the theory of originating somewhere else with the fact that the city of Wuhan was the site of the first major outbreak by months. In retrospect, we've seen that it spreads very rapidly in just about any urban environment of reasonable population density, so if it originated somewhere else, why the large delay? It really doesn't make that much sense.
If anything, I just think those early local "patient zeros" demonstrate that the virus started spreading worldwide much easier than we initially suspected. This makes more sense to me, given both the long incubation and how to most people, a mild case just seems like a cold or flu.
Re: oh, that's just rich (Score:2)
Read through to the end of following article when ubhave time. It's long 20min read I guess.
Doesnt blame anyone but has the best compilation of facts.
Anyway its pointless blaming anyone for any diseases. Definitely not during a pandemic.
https://science.thewire.in/the... [thewire.in]
And definitely not for something we still have almost negligible understanding after 1 year.
Despite all the vaccines and repurposed drugs, and online social media debates by hordes of professionals, the truth IRL is very complicated and not
When it comes to the USA ... (Score:5, Funny)
The Indian government a day later issued a statement saying media reports using the term "Indian Variant" were without any basis, saying the WHO had classified the variant as just B.1.617.
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PR job (Score:5, Insightful)
So glad India is more concerned with their image than they are with keeping their citizens alive
Re:PR job (Score:4, Insightful)
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It is so so much worse than that. He has also focused on squashing any media reports about the extent of the virus including jailing doctors and reporters as being anti-national. He has also continued to focus more money on temples than the virus. States not controlled by his party are also getting fewer resources and their governments are blamed by the media (his party controls most of it) for the problems. He is willing to kill millions of people if that gives his party more power. Trump wishes he could h
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I'm sure their government has enough people to do more than one thing at a time.
Not that I think this is a particularly good idea, although in general we should probably try to avoid naming variants by where they are first discovered. It's really not helpful to anyone.
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Do you propose we name them after Perl scripts or line noise instead? With place names, there is a chance of the name being remembered and associated with something broadly meaningful.
Re: PR job (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing we learned from the "Spanish flu" was that it just blacklists a region and its people. It takes decades to remove the stigma. This stifles current and future efforts to coordinate and curb similar incidents. If we didn't call it the "Spanish Flu", we could have saved so many people on both sides of the war.
Another example is GRID which allowed HIV to spread in heterosexual circles undetected because few thought it was their problem and few were looking for it.
You can also see how labeling it the "Wuhan virus" gave some of the most degenerate people in our society an excuse to attack fellow members of our society.
We all seem to remember AIDS, Hep-C, etc just fine without attaching it improperly to any subgroup within our society. If anything it removed biases within our studies of each.
There is a historical & scientific reason we don't associate outbreaks with cultural or ethnic or regional identities. Ignoring the history is a great way to repeat it.
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Another example is GRID which allowed HIV to spread in heterosexual circles undetected because few thought it was their problem and few were looking for it.
That's "gay-related immune deficiency" for anyone too young to remember.
By the way, there is an interesting Radiolab episode about patient zero and the origin of various epidemics and pandemics: link [wnycstudios.org].
Re:PR job (Score:4, Insightful)
Naming diseases after countries encourages the hiding of data to avoid being smeared with the association.
We should focus on solving problems, not assigning blame.
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Yes... suggest instead naming diseases after random street names from any city near to a place where disease was observed. Or for that matter; draw a random city name from a hat and pick a street. Then we could have say the "Lucas Valley Rd" variant.
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Half of that meaning comes from "SARS-CoV-2" -- the comparable label would be something like "Indian variant of SARS-CoV-2". "B.1.617.2" needs a decoder ring to be understood. It is specific, but not meaningful by itself. If you are writing an article for virologists, that's a better name to use, and I expect that is what is already done; but if your audience is the general public, using it is hostile to readers.
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SARS-COV-2 B.1.617.2 is a far more meaningful name in any way shape or form than "Indian Variant". It tells you It's related to SARS
It's meaningful to scientists but it is Not informative to common people - You have to know what SARS is - You have to know what Coronavirus is - you have to have some sense of those numbers to get meaning out of them... B.1.617.2 looks like the output of a random number generator. It is also DIFFICULT for common people to remember. B.1.617.2 is not an appropriate name fo
Re:PR job (Score:5, Interesting)
Shorthand names are helpful for the general public, they can't keep track of B110.593.59 and a half-dozen other alphanumerical strings. I don't see any alternative shorthand naming schemes being proposed. It's also not the same as inventing new words like Chinavirus because it ties in with your political campaign.
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I do hate the censorship (Score:3)
But yes, a location is a silly primary key. On top of all the problems squiggleslash noted, what if more than one significant mutated strain happens in the same country? Or what if someone tests an old blood sample and discovers that the "Elbonian" variant had been circulating months earlier in Latveria?
It's useful information to hear that something is "Indian food" or "Indian music". Then I can make some guesses what it's like. But there's nothing "Indian" about any SARS COV 2 mutation.
"B.1.617" is an unam
Re:I do hate the censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
But yes, a location is a silly primary key.
People are not databases.
What if more than one significant mutated strain happens in the same country?
Prepend or append modifiers to country name.
Or what if someone tests an old blood sample and discovers that the "Elbonian" variant had been circulating months earlier in Latveria?
Perfect = enemy of good enough.
"B.1.617" is an unambiguous lookup term if I need to know what vaccines work against it or where it's spreading.
The general population is never going to invest the effort required to remember random strings of letters and numbers.
Re: I do hate the censorship (Score:2)
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Re:PR job (Score:5, Interesting)
If you name the variant after where it was discovered that's a big disincentive to report new variants. The last thing governments want is to have a variant names after their country as it tries to recover.
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The only practical answer here is to come up with a memorable name before the media (and the people) give it one. Trying to stamp it out afterwards is an exercise in futility. Most people still remember the RRS Sir David Attenborough as Boaty McBoatface.
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The problem is, we're going to see multiple variants from some of the same places, especially in nations with large unvaccinated populations... like India. We'll have to start naming them after cities, and then boroughs...
Re:PR job (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really not helpful to anyone.
It may not be helpful to you, but I sure as hell remember "Indian Variant" easier than whatever B number WHO gave it.
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It may not be helpful to you, but I sure as hell remember "Indian Variant" easier than whatever B number WHO gave it.
Indeed but what's in a name? The thing the world is calling the Indian Variant was more widely sequenced in the UK, and sequenced in the UK before India. So what purpose do you gain calling it the indian variant other than that's where it is estimated the current largest outbreak exists?
The reality is that there's no point in common people naming variants at all. All it achieves is that they become misinformed about the nature, spread and origin of the the virus.
Re: PR job (Score:4, Informative)
Are you really going to try arguing that remembering a string of numbers is easier for most people than remembering one or two words? Here's a memorable quote for you (not mine)
It is easier to picture an alligator performing ballet in a pink tutu than it is to visualize the number 377642.
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Are you really going to try arguing that remembering a string of numbers is easier for most people than remembering one or two words?
Why are most people remember numbers? We don't even do that for our own species. The common person gains about as much from talking about the Indian Variant as we do about your specific family lineage.
Re: PR job (Score:2)
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Not that I think this is a particularly good idea, although in general we should probably try to avoid naming variants by where they are first discovered. It's really not helpful to anyone.
I find it helpful to know where things are coming from especially early on.
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So glad India is more concerned with their image than they are with keeping their citizens alive
This isn't a zero sum game. Having a PR group go on the offense against a name that can harm the image has zero effect on the health of the citizens themselves or the efforts to stop the virus.
Unless you're suggesting giving the PR guys needles and vaccines and telling them to go out, or worse, putting them in labcoats to try and do some science. Have you ever seen a marketing person doing anything science related? Go to some stock photo sites and see just how well *that* would work keeping citizens alive.
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Is India PR sensitive about their general image as a land of endless shanty towns, grinding poverty and people living in all manner of filth?
I wonder about this seriously, because I know a lot of people whose mental image of India is the many gross images of India you can easily find. I think there's a lot of truth to it, but at the same time India is huge and there's millions of people not living like that who would rather not be stereotyped as dwelling in garbage.
Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
So for the past hundred or more years we have often been naming diseases for their origin .. examples: Spanish flu, Ebola, Marburg, West Nile virus, Zika, MERS, etc. That was before we were not afraid of viruses. I did not become racist against Spanish people because the outbreak might have originated or been first identified there. Honestly I took it more as an honor for the region that helped identify an outbreak. Retarded people started blaming races and cultures for viruses, and of course the insecure people have to fall for that like bigger fools.
Re: Thanks (Score:5, Informative)
The Spanish Flu didn't really come from Spain, though. They just reported more on it than the news outlets that were censored in WWI.
There are a lot of historians who think that the 1918 Flu started in the US and we brought it over to Europe with our troops.
Re: Thanks (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ten-myths-about-1918-flu-pandemic-180967810/
No one believes the so-called “Spanish flu” originated in Spain.
The major countries involved in the war were keen to avoid encouraging their enemies, so reports of the extent of the flu were suppressed in Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. By contrast, neutral Spain had no need to keep the flu under wraps. That created the false impression that Spain was bearing the brunt of the disease.
No one credible has "debunked" the Kansas theory.
Re:Thanks (Score:4, Informative)
I did not become racist against Spanish people because the outbreak might have originated or been first identified there.
That's good, since it was first identified in Kansas. Those poor Kansans experience enough discrimination as it is.
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"Haskell [wikipedia.org] virus" would mean something quite different!
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So for the past hundred or more years we have often been naming diseases for their origin .. examples: Spanish flu
Ironically you kind of prove their point.
The Spanish Flu is not called the Spanish Flu because it originated there or even mostly spread there. In fact, it's most likely that the 1918 H1N1 flu started in Kansas. (There's no way to really know any more, but it's thought that the first major outbreak was in Haskell County, where it then spread to Camp Funston, which was a major training center due to World War I. From there, it made it to Europe.) The reason it became known as the "Spanish flu" was because Sp
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So for the past hundred or more years we have often been naming diseases for their origin .. examples: Spanish flu, Ebola, Marburg, West Nile virus, Zika, MERS, etc. That was before we were not afraid of viruses. I did not become racist against Spanish people because the outbreak might have originated or been first identified there. Honestly I took it more as an honor for the region that helped identify an outbreak. Retarded people started blaming races and cultures for viruses, and of course the insecure people have to fall for that like bigger fools.
There's a difference between "the Indian variant" and some of the clearly racist stuff that was spewed last summer by the president of the United States.
Stuff like "Kung Flu". He said stuff like that with obvious leering facial expressions, knowing he was speaking to and encouraging racist, bigoted blame-gaming. His whole delivery was about blame, not about nomenclature. My point isn't to Trump-bash, but simply to point out that this time, a massively influential person politicized the naming and made
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You may want to work on your excuses a bit...
Re:Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Swine flu led to a massive drop in pork sales for the next few years. West Nile virus led to a massive drop off in tourism to Egypt. And so on. It’s great that you’re not racist, but that doesn’t mean there are no effects on the places or things that share a name with these viruses. That’s why India is fighting this and why the WHO changed its policy to no longer use such names, hence why it’s COVID-19 and not something else.
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To which the only conclusion is that a lot of people are idiots.
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Based on AMPLE evidence it is clear that a lot of people are idiots. Doing something that assumes people are smart and think about their decisions is idiotic given existing evidence.
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Swine flu led to a massive drop in pork sales for the next few years.
That tends to happen when you kill off a lot of the pigs [google.com]. There just aren't as many left to sell.
Re:Thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
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Beyond that I'm not even sure what your point is other than raising a conspiracy theory about the virus not originating in China. The CCP is likely quite pleased they got most of the world and media to go along with no more location names things just for them, but not as a general rule going forward: The CCP wanted special treat
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The Korean's, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai's as well as the Chinese who are being attacked, often physically for causing Covid would disagree.
Previous experience, going back to when Spain was one of the only countries with the freedom to report on a new flu and the Spanish people at the time were stigmatized for reporting on it shows the downsides of associating a nationality with a disease as there are a lot of stupid people who don't understand anything more complex then such and such country and their peop
Re: Thanks (Score:2)
Please read your commentator when u r in an open frame of mind.
Chinese Virus is bad, Chinese Variant is good.
Bottom line is people need to stop being so rabidly FOR or AGAINST such inconsequential things like what a virus or variant is named after.
And being so touchy to engage with the trolls n shills for whom this is an everyday paying work.
No one gives a shit except politicians or media who just use everything to create news or score brownie points.
And the idiot armies who worship some politician or the
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Retarded people started blaming races and cultures for viruses, and of course the insecure people have to fall for that like bigger fools.
True.
Maybe we should wise up and stop voting for those kinds of "leaders".
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In the context of the OP, correcting "first identified" to "first publicly identified" is splitting hairs.
An entire country being shamed on social media (Score:2)
What's next, the Indian government launching TrollTrace.com?
Pretty sure I've seen this episode already.
Others are concerned over their image too (Score:3)
Like China who bullied a german publisher into removing a paragraph about the origin of the virus form a childrens book:
https://swarajyamag.com/insta/... [swarajyamag.com]
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You say, we want! (Score:5, Insightful)
India, a country, is working hard to fix the narrative. They're young in the scene, and relatively new at the foreign press. They can twist Facebook's balls, and they may get these words limited internally, but in the end, people are people and think the darndest things. You can limit speech, but you can't limit thought.
I appreciate their sentiment in the sense that its probably not the "indian flu" anymore than its the "wuhan flu", but having a nation state tell you that you can't say stupid things sounds like... something, right?
--
I love the smell of rain, and I love the sound of the ocean waves. - Amy Purdy
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Did the UK raise an uproar? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was hearing a lot about the more infectious (at the time) UK variant earlier in the year. I don't recall anyone at the time considering the phrase racist.
Interestingly enough, neither the summary nor TFA, used the word 'racist'. That word only appeared when the right-wing's elite 'Shill Force Alpha' appeared here on Slashdot and started whinging about how the term 'Indian Covid variant' is being called out as 'racist' by TFA. For them this has more to do with them being butthurt about Trump being called out as the unapologetic racist that he is which ironic since that is the reason they voted for him in the first place. For some strange reason these Trumpist
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My point is that colloquially, the variants acquired names that happen to reflect where they were first identified. This isn't too dissimilar from the already reasonably popular convention of naming a newly discovered medical condition after the first person who was diagnosed with it.
The COVID19 variants have more precise names, of course, and in any official communication, it is certainly more appropriate that the official terminology be used.
But in practice, I don't think most people mean anything
Country image (Score:2)
some nations like UK, South Africa. and Brazil (Score:2)
They don't seem to care. I say they spend their focus on the right places.
Uh, would anyone object to a "Kansas City variant" (Score:2)
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that would be fine label, if we have novel mutation here. what's the big deal? pandering to snowflakes is like feeding a bear, they'll just want more. time to stop the b.s. and start offending again, like normal humans.
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The Kansas City Covids. Sounds like a killer NFL team
You're talking to a league that currently has a team called Football Team.
They wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot teepee pole.
Brazilian, Indian UK ect ...variant, only a label. (Score:3)
To be quite honest the main questions are which Vaccines are effective against each strain.
All these names do is a shorthand as to who is on the frontline for these strains. It's not blame if anything it's sympathy.
The Brazilian strain for example seems more deadly for younger people, pretty much all people want to know is which vaccines are effective and which are spreading in our own countries and neighboring countries.
Only the terminally stupid would think a particular variant will only be found in a particular group
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When George Carlin said something like 'how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.' He never imagined that latter Trump would refer to them his base.
Still it's not over yet, there is still a chance of bleach in the gene pool and a raise in the average IQ, when they don't comply with basic measures to limit risk of exposure.
People are fed up with every political party, medi (Score:2)
It's quite sad that Govts the world over seem to focus more on such inconsequential things nowadays like objecting to virus names!
Some days back Singapore got all sensitive and was objecting, before that China anyway had objected vehemently.
No one would think twice about what it is named when that thing is killing people by millions and causing billions of losses.
That being said, the story is a little bit sinister. TZHough with politicians & political parties it was expected by all citizens that they do
Down the Toilet (Score:2)
Yeah shouild be the 'Indian Government' variant (Score:2)
The variant arose because of the government's botched handling of the outbreak, they get to own it.
Just more politically correct BS (Score:2)
No one is blaming India for the Indian variant. Humans label things to make them easy to communicate.
I wish the chronically offended whould stop trying to find any excuse to be offended in order to get media exposure.
I am sick and tired of hearing about people that want to force others to not offend them instead of putting on their adult underwear and dealing with it using a phrase children are taught
"Remove"? Don't You Mean "Censor"? (Score:3)
Enough with the euphemisms.
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India's conservative government. (Score:2)
Use codes like malware strains / web standards (Score:2)
It would be easier to understand if they treat it like a software standard or a malware strain that a vaccine supports. Though perhaps instead of saying "browser x version y supports standard xyz v1.3" they should also add a some well defined numbers indicating percentage effectiveness. If they just said Coronavirus v1.0, v1.1, v1.2 then it would be easier to tell what is going on. A truck drives the street frequently telling people to stay home with the big variant name N501Y on the side of the truck. TV
Will the Whining Ever End? (Score:2)
Will people ever learn that it has nothing to do with the people of the area, and everything to do with the origin (or at least where it was thought to originate). It's not about you, it's not about blaming you. Stop being a snowflake.
For the redneck bumpkins who do blame the people, well, I'm sure you're not literate enough to even be here on /. and that's a very low bar to hurdle.
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But yet the pandemic was called âSpanish Fluâ(TM) â" again, a result of the war.
Sort of. During WWI, news about the flu outbreak and spread was censored in the media. For morale and security (readiness state of troops) reasons. Since Spain was neutral, their press wasn't subject to such control. Leaving them as the main European news outlet free to publish stories on the spread.
paging Barbra Streisand (Score:2)
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Is "UK variant" a racist name?
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Replace "brave enough" by "allowed" and your post is fine.