Months after some were concerned that panic over monkeypox was homophobic, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced Monday that, due to concerns that the original name could be misconstrued as insensitive and racist, monkeypox will be renamed “mpox.”
Now, stop rolling your eyes and read on.
“When the outbreak of monkeypox expanded earlier this year, racist and stigmatizing language online, in other settings and in some communities was observed and reported to WHO. In several meetings, public and private, a number of individuals and countries raised concerns and asked WHO to propose a way forward to change the name,” the WHO said in a statement released Monday. Monkeypox has been called such since its discovery in 1958.
Nearly 30,000 infections have been reported in the United States during the outbreak, largely within the homosexual male community. As such, liberal snowflakes have been struggling to deal with the reporting on the outbreak. Earlier this year, it was clear that the media and health agencies were actively downplaying the disease’s connection to the gay community.
Related: Insanity Wrap: How Not to Catch Monkeypox for Dummies
“We seem paralyzed by the fear of stigmatizing this disease while we totally ignore the epidemiology. If we had an outbreak associated with bowling, would we not warn people to stop bowling?” Don Weiss, the director of surveillance for the NYC Health Department’s Bureau of Communicable Disease, observed. The CDC even sought to disassociate monkeypox from homosexual sex acts on its website.
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