Via Reuters: U.S. officials want ’swine’ out of flu name
What’s in a name? U.S. pork producers are finding that the name of the virus spreading from Mexico is affecting their business, prompting U.S. officials to argue for changing the name from swine flu.At a news briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took pains to repeatedly refer to the flu as the “H1N1 virus.”
“This is not a food-borne illness, virus. It is not correct to refer to it as swine flu because really that’s not what this is about,” Vilsack said.
Israel has already rejected the name swine flu, and opted to call it “Mexico flu.” Jewish dietary laws forbid eating pork.
I am guessing that the swine is out of the bag, and we’ll have to live with the name. Heck, some people’s vocabularies are so poor, they may not know what “swine” means anyway. 1
Let’s just call it by its Spanish name “gripa porcina” and be done with it.
Sphere: Related Content- Or do I just feel that way because it is grading season? I kid; I Kid. [↩]
April 29th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
That little note on Israel is interesting. I might have thought that Israeli officials would want to call it “swine flu,” as a modern reminder of why our ancestors decreed that eating swine was an abomination.
I detect yet another excuse for a secular-Orthodox flare-up in Israel (as if one were needed).
April 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
The Israel thing struck me as well–if pork is bad, why no allow it reinforced the problems associated with this strain of flu?
The Mexican tourist people have to love it being called “the Mexico flu.”
April 29th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Hey, if they weren’t in a continent at war, the Spanish couldn’t have been very happy about calling the deadly pandemic back then the “Spanish Flu”.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
We are coming out of the normal time of year when we have flu circulating in the UK so we don’t really know what size of epidemic there may be in the next couple of months.