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Apparently it’s “racist” to use the name for a disease that’s been used for 65 years, ever since the disease was identified. A name that was used because the disease was originally discovered in monkeys. Hence, “monkey pox”.
Now, I’m fairly certain that if the first thing you associate with the word “monkey” is “black people”, you’re an actual racist. Not the disagree-with-the-loony-left imaginary “racist”, but the real deal: someone who harbours prejudicial views of people solely because of their skin colour.
In this case, though, it’s apparently black folks who are thinking “monkey=black dude”.
A group of scientists, mostly hailing from Africa, are calling for the scientific community to rename monkeypox viruses due to concerns that the current geographically-determined names are offensive.
The group of 29 scientists wrote Friday that scientists should rename two monkeypox virus clades — the “West African” clade and the “Congo Basin” clade — to be identified by numbers instead of geographic origin points.
It’s funny how people pick and choose which geographic-origin names are “racist”. “Wuhan flu” was waaacist, but Spanish flu is still A-OK. Nobody from Germany is getting their lederhosen in a bunch about Marburg virus, either. Us Aussies aren’t exactly ropeable about Ross River fever, come to think of it.
But the cupcakes in Africa are making quite the song and dance.
“Given the increasingly rapid communication of, and attention to, the international human MPXV outbreak, it is important to consider an appropriate, non-discriminatory, and non-stigmatizing nomenclature and classification of MPXV clades,” their publication said.
Will no-one think of the monkeys’ feelings?
It gets better, though:
One of the scientists involved in the position paper, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases Dr. Christian Happi, told STAT News that the way the media is covering the monkeypox outbreak in the West is “racist.”
“We find that very discriminatory, we find that very stigmatizing and to some extent … I find it very racist,” he said. “The mainstream media, instead of showing pictures of people that are presenting with the lesions, which are white men, they keep putting forward pictures of children in Africa and Africans. And there’s no connection.”
Hmm. On a Google image search on “monkeypox”, of the top 24 images that show single, identifiable skin colours, 14 are white. Of the others, most show a mosaic of images featuring various skin colours.
No connection to Africa?
The monkeypox virus generally lives in African rainforests and outbreaks outside Africa are relatively uncommon.
The Daily Caller
It is true that much of the current outbreak appears to have originated at a gay sex festival in Spain. But it is also thought that the disease was circulating undetected in Britain and Europe slightly earlier. Four cases were diagnosed in 2018 and 2019, all in individuals recently arrived from Nigeria.
It looks very much as if there is a connection to Africa.
But we’re not allowed to say that any more.
