02-10-2021, 10:57 AM
(02-10-2021, 10:14 AM)cardcrimson Wrote: Oh Sh*t indeed. I find it extremely offensive that the strains are labeled South African and UK. Prejudice and xenophobia, here we come. . . .
Hey, didya hear about B.1.426? No, not the prison joke, but the COVID strain. Better watch out!
Seriously though, B.1.1.7, B.1.351, P.1 are hard to keep distinct. If someone referred to "B.1.1.351" or "B.1.315", did he just make a typo or did he mean something different that "B.1.351". There's a reason we don't refer to laws by their numbers, or people by SSNs, etc. Words have a lot of extra (or extraneous) information in them. That makes them easy to distinguish. "UK", "South African", and "Brazil" are unlikely to get confused; especially so because we have a geography in our mind that keeps them separate. Sure, they could be named "Blue", "Prejudice", and "Trot" and still be very distinct.
I wouldn't want them named "UK", "England", and "Britain" or "51.5,-0.1", "-25.7,28.2", "-15.8,-47.9".
I bet you're going to have to Google "B.1.426" to find out what I used as a teaser. Not much info in that name.
I don't find it offensive to have a disease named after where it was first identified, or a dog named for the kennels where it was born. What is offensive to me is associating the location to a negative connotation.