urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:my_prettypretty Let's find its hidden treasures, you and me. Don't let the world win. [-hope] [+romantic] 2006-06-09T22:24:03Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:my_prettypretty:1554 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z 2006-06-09T22:24:03Z So what ever happened to the West Nile Virus? Shouldn't we have heard about it again by now? Did we manage to eradicate it? Or have the news networks just not picked it up for another season? Maybe our public health conscience only has room for one potential epidemic at a time, and right now this Avian Flu is trupming good ol' West Nile.<br /><br />And who decides what to name these potential pandemic eradicators of the human race? I'm sure there's some committee at the CDC who are being way overpaid to sit around and debate the best way to name these diseases. Notice that it's the <i>Avian</i> Flu, not the <i>Asian</i> Flu, and the <i>West Nile</i> Virus, not the <i>Egyptian</i> Virus (or even the <i>East</i> Nile Virus, for that matter). This differs strikingly from the Asiatic Flu, the Hong Kong Flu, or the Spanish Flu epidemics of the 20th Century. And it doesn't follow the more recent trend of giving the disease a long name of medical jargony terms that is inevitably reduced to an acronym (AIDS, SARS). West Nile Virus and Avian Flu seem like really deliberate attempts at being more PC by 1)not attaching a deadly epidemic to a particular ethnic group of people, and 2)not indentifying the source of such an epidemic in any <i>human</i> population at all.<br /><br />One thing is clear: any of the epidemiological nomenclature techniques outlined above are better than <i>The Black Plague</i>. Talk about your PR nightmare! Try to put a positive spin on that, FOX News!