The digital writing aid Grammarly will now flag the phrases ‘Wuhan virus’ and ‘Chinese virus’ as potentially offensive and encourage people to instead use ‘COVID-19’ or ‘the coronavirus.’
The phrases were added to the tool’s list of sensitive words and phrases that should be avoided, as they can ‘encourage bias and misinformation.’
Grammarly points to a 2015 recommendation from the World Health Organization to avoid using countries and specific places to label illnesses to explain the suggestion.
The writing aid Grammarly has updated its database to flag the terms ‘Wuhan virus’ and ‘Chinese virus’ as sensitive and encourages users to instead use ‘COVID-19’ or ‘coronavirus’
‘In recent years, medical authorities have moved away from naming illnesses after places or groups of people,’ Grammarly’s correction note states, according to a Fast Company report.
‘Using unofficial names that associate a disease with a particular region or group of people can lead to inaccurate assumptions and bias.’
The Trump administration and members of the GOP have insisted on labeling SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, as the ‘China virus’ or the ‘Wuhan virus.’
In March, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went so far as to refuse signing on to a joint statement from the G7 after the other six members wouldn’t agree to use the term ‘Wuhan virus.’
A number of watchdog groups have tied these naming conventions to a new rise in racist harassment and violence directed toward Asian Americans.
A recent study from social media analysis group L1ght found a 900 percent increase in hate speech and racist posts directed toward China and people of Chinese descent on Twitter during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grammarly says it is following the recommendation of the World Health Organization, which issued guidelines in 2015 suggesting that new viruses and illnesses no longer be identified with the countries of their origin
Another study from Stop AAPI Hate found more than 650 direct reports of racist acts against Asian Americans related to the COVID-19 in a single week.
People reported being physically attacked, spit on, thrown out of stores, refused service in Uber and Lyft, and harassed online.
The British scientific journal Nature recently posted an apology for initially describing SARS-CoV2 as the ‘China coronavirus.’
‘It’s clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs — for example, on their health and livelihoods,’ the journal wrote in an editorial.
‘Law-enforcement agencies say they are making investigation of hate crimes a high priority, but such inquiries might come too late for some.’
The naming conventions behind new pathogens and their resultant illnesses has been inconsistent in recent years.
Some have been named after their regions of origin, including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the first known case of which was documented in Jordan.
Similarly, the Ebola virus was named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where researchers observed the first documented cases.
There has never been a consistent rule for naming new pathogens after geographical regions. Diseases like SARS, swine flu, and the rare human form of mad cow disease are all region free. The Spanish flu famously was named after Spain not because it originated there but because it was the few countries not repressing information about the outbreak
Other illnesses, like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Swine flu (H1N1), and the rare human form of mad cow disease (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) are named without reference to their place of origin.
Perhaps most famously, the Spanish flu is believed to have originated not in Spain, but in China, though some still debate the exact origin.
According to WHO’s assistant director-general for health security, Keiji Fukada, the new political climate has made it difficult to use regional identifiers to name new pathogens.
‘The use of names such as “swine flu” and “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” has had unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing certain communities or economic sectors,’ Fukada said.
‘This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected.’
‘We’ve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals.’
‘This can have serious consequences for peoples’ lives and livelihoods.’