What should be the proper name for swine flu, now that we know that people are catching it from infected people, and not from swine? The World Health Organization has stopped calling it swine flu in favor of “influenza A (H1N1)”. But that name also applies to one of three strains of seasonal flu and to the deadly 1918-1919 Spanish flu (which didn’t even originate in Spain!) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls it both “novel influenza A (H1N1)” and “H1N1 flu (swine flu)” on its website. Of course the Mexican government objects to calling it “Mexican flu”.
An article on what to call this virus appears this week in Science.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment