I understand your reasoning for justifying the term “Mexican flu,” as you argue that historically we have named other viruses in similar ways. However, just because we have acted a certain way in the past, does not mean we should continue with that logic. Naming a virus, and a fatal one I might add, in relation to an ethnicity is simply a form of othering, and thus it is a form of racism. It is obvious that many anti-immigration groups are using this virus (and the name) as a form of exclusion, which is implicitly racist. Like Nojojojo says, hopefully we will get around to renaming those other diseases because it is simply wrong to project such racist implications.

It’s standard nomenclature to name a virus after its origin.

You’re so right! Except, you’re not.

It used to be standard to name a virus this way, back in the last century. But as I have said in repeated comments down the line (WTH, did this get linked in a “poor reading comprehension” forum or something?), all international and most national health authorities have done away with this naming system as misleading and anachronistic. The people in charge of this stuff and the WHO are trying to get rid of naming it after animals for the same reason. Hence we have SARS, AIDS, rotavirus, and other recently-discovered or -isolated diseases that don’t have regionally-based names, and hence we have a concerted effort by health authorities to rename other regionally-named viruses, like norovirus (instead of Norwalk virus). For all I know, they will eventually get around to renaming the diseases you named. Fortunately these organizations care more about the ways names can be misused than, apparently, you do.

Please provide some source links, so we can all read the same information you’re using to come up with your thoughts on this.

All flu-cases in the current epidemic are confirmed to be the new virus officially named A/California/04/2009(H1N1), meaning Influenza-type A, Subtype H1N1, Lab No. 4, harvested on 18. April 2009 from a throat swab of a 9 year-old infected patient in San Diego.

Mexican authorities now have strong evidence that a migrant worker by the name of La Glorias imported the virus from the USA and caused the initial infection of about 400 people in Mexico (called ground zero) at the end of March 2009. Two of the infected children died of pneumonia, while a young boy, Edgar Hernandez, the suspected „Patient Zero“, recovered from it completely. In addition, none of the pigs of the Smithfield Foods pig breading farm located in the boy’s area (ground zero) tested positive for any kind of flu.

The history of the infection explains what Obama meant when he stated that “it doesn’t make any sense closing the barn-door after the horses are out”. The horses cam from the USA, so why prevent Mexicans from entering the US when it should be the other way around?

Considering all the facts an ignorant person or a racist only would insist on calling it the “Mexican flu”.