[Xmca-l] Re: Covid 19: Getting the Name Right
Leif Strandberg
leifstrandberg.ab@telia.com
Fri Apr 17 07:27:05 PDT 2020
In Sweden, this flu is referred to as Spanish Disease or only ”The Spanish”.
The northernmost parts of Sweden (around the Arctic Circle) suffered the
worst. . A large winter market is said to be the infection source and a lack
of healthcare. A lot of young people died, esp. young men who were called
into military service (Sweden, like Spain, was neutral in this war). In
today's Corona times, much is written about the Spanish disease.
Leif Strandberg
Sweden
Från: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of JULIE WADDINGTON
<julie.waddington@udg.edu>
Svara till: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Datum: fredag 17 april 2020 11:42
Till: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Ämne: [Xmca-l] Re: Covid 19: Getting the Name Right
Dear all,
I haven't checked in yet because I've been busy just coping, but I have
appreciated some of your reflections.
Regarding the flu pandemic of the early 20th century (during World War I),
its naming seems to have been related to media censorship. The 'great'
powers tried to minimise reporting of it (sound familiar?) and pumped money
into campaigns to keep spirits up (that rings bells too).
Why Spanish? Because Spain was neutral and therefore censors were not
headbent on keeping the population calm and focused on fighting the war, as
in other countries. Media reporting (including reports on the King who
almost died from the flu) could therefore have given the impression that
incidence was higher in Spain. Or, as others claim, the naming comes from
the fact that news on it came from Spain; like naming a deathly comet after
the scientist who detects it and writes about it.
I didn't have a clue about all this till the other day when I listened to a
documentary on it. What strikes me as particularly worrying (but not
surprising) are the resemblances between the censorship/jingoism of then and
what's happening now.
Take care everyone,
julie
De: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] en nom
de Andy Blunden [andyb@marxists.org]
Enviat el: divendres, 17 / abril / 2020 09:01
Per a: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
Tema: [Xmca-l] Re: Covid 19: Getting the Name Right
I read that in a book on the history of pandemics, about a decade ago. Can't
remember the author. But I really hated what the author had to say about
HIV, which he characterised as a "life-style" illness of homosexual men. So
I checked his credentials with Prof. Short, an epidemiology expert at the
University, who confirmed that the author was indeed authoritative, and it
was unfortunate that his personal prejudices let him down when he came to
HIV. So I took it that the Kansas story was legit. In any case, it was never
anything to do with Spain.
I see https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu*Hypotheses_about_the_source__;Iw!!Mih3wA!VAjnmwyXpGWMIoW8NDZ7kLmwjr4WafCMGPUUnEI85hfVCwOWYDMD5p-Y-Fubw1nRHpfGRw$
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu*Hypot
heses_about_the_source__;Iw!!Mih3wA!RVmjWrnqeBJAI3Z50ZvFTvUzhV5qGCVz7aRPbEzP
-_dWzviP8MxkAPYK8Weo5MlThnCFEw$> has a number of hypotheses.
Andy
Andy Blunden
Hegel for Social Movements
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!R
VmjWrnqeBJAI3Z50ZvFTvUzhV5qGCVz7aRPbEzP-_dWzviP8MxkAPYK8Weo5MmpALOdRw$>
Home Page
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.
htm__;!!Mih3wA!RVmjWrnqeBJAI3Z50ZvFTvUzhV5qGCVz7aRPbEzP-_dWzviP8MxkAPYK8Weo5
Mkp4uJW3Q$>
On 17/04/2020 3:45 pm, Edward Wall wrote:
> An article I read in National Geographic (around 2014) gave a quite different
> story as regard incubation. I assume you are referring to a somewhat more
> recent and trustworthy source? I’d appreciate the reference as I used to study
> the mathematics behind things of this sort.
>
> Ed
>
> Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense
> of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
>
>> On Apr 16, 2020, at 9:54 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>> Well, the Americans did pretty well in naming the flu pandemic which was
>> incubated in a military camp in Kansas and taken across the Atlantic to Spain
>> en route to the carnage in France, the "Spanish Flu."
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> Andy Blunden
>> Hegel for Social Movements
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!Wk
>> dkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPM0KExfeg$>
>> Home Page
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.h
>> tm__;!!Mih3wA!WkdkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPP
>> DBSRIdQ$>
>> On 17/04/2020 8:21 am, Edward Wall wrote:
>>> If you’all want to get picky about names you might look here for some
>>> possibilities:. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html__;!!Mih3wA!VAjnmwyXpGWMIoW8NDZ7kLmwjr4WafCMGPUUnEI85hfVCwOWYDMD5p-Y-Fubw1n3yYexxQ$
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html__;!!
>>> Mih3wA!QDqoHKfN9rsIen0hktwg62vWF_Zg0RnuNDpr6G3EFD42Kj1NDYzm2T7NEly6rlqhG6ZKw
>>> Q$> .
>>>
>>> In any case, I find the other name: SARS-CoV-2
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index
>>> .html__;!!Mih3wA!QDqoHKfN9rsIen0hktwg62vWF_Zg0RnuNDpr6G3EFD42Kj1NDYzm2T7NEly
>>> 6rlqWKjRnFQ$> far more informative, far more relevant, and far more
>>> disturbing as regards the situation at hand.
>>>
>>> Gadamer writes “Thus a person who wants to understands must
>>> question what lies behind what is said. He must understand it as an answer
>>> to a question. If we go back behind what is said then we inevitably ask
>>> questions beyond what is said.” So, perhaps, I have problems with a thinking
>>> that believes it has landed on the “correct” definition/answer (and all
>>> other thinkers are fools) as that may well entail, perhaps innocently, a
>>> curtailing of the crucial question. I find that the the answer 'COVID-19’
>>> obscures a lot (and, to be fair, does some illumination).
>>>
>>> Ed
>>> Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a
>>> sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
>>>
>>>> On Apr 16, 2020, at 3:35 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I won't pretend to you that this is on my night table. Someone recently
>>>> sent me the following quote from Hegel:
>>>>
>>>> “For although it is commonly said that reasonable men pay attention not to
>>>> the word but to the thing itself, yet this does not give us permission to
>>>> describe a thing in terms inappropriate to it. For this is at once
>>>> incompetence and deceit, to fancy and to pretend that one merely has not
>>>> the right word, and to hide from oneself that really one has failed to get
>>>> hold of the thing itself, i.e. the Notion. If one had the Notion, then one
>>>> would also have the right word.” (p.198) – sec. 329
>>>>
>>>> Vygotsky liked to quote Tolstoy: Слово почти всегда готово, когда готово
>>>> понятие (the word is nearly (!) always read when the concept is ready) but
>>>> it seems to me that in this case he would have stressed the word "nearly".
>>>> There was a long debate over what to call Covid 19 at the WHO, and many
>>>> people (including Michael Lin at Stanford) opine that they got it wrong.
>>>>
>>>> I think that they got it right, but that it took a while. I don't think it
>>>> is
>>>> non-argument to point out that repeated attempts to change the name to
>>>> "Chinese virus" or the nineteenth iteration of Covid or whatever are also
>>>> motivated and not in a good way.
>>>>
>>>> More importantly (because as Hegel says mere incompetence and transparent
>>>> self-deceit are at stake in this instance) I think in most societies naming
>>>> is a process--a child has different names at different times of life, and
>>>> LSV is probaby wrong to treat naming as a single function of speech that is
>>>> simply replaced by signifying and does not itself develop.
>>>>
>>>> What disturbs me about the Hegel quote (and LSV's obvious enthusiasm for
>>>> it) is that it seems to suggest that everything has, in the final analysis,
>>>> only one correct name. But perhaps it all depends on that final analysis.
>>>>
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>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> Sangmyung University
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>>>> Book Review: 'Fees, Beets, and Music: A critical perusal of Critical
>>>> Pedagogy and Marx, Vygotsky and Freire: Phenomenal forms and educational
>>>> action research' in Mind Culture and Activity
>>>>
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847__;!!Mih3wA!VAjnmwyXpGWMIoW8NDZ7kLmwjr4WafCMGPUUnEI85hfVCwOWYDMD5p-Y-Fubw1ltwsqSWA$
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1
>>>> 0749039.2020.1745847__;!!Mih3wA!RxSyHRy22kiqZQHwsKuP3HGFuU9O2uo9DyVwSIIsNFf
>>>> E0O3RpibgknJS735vbN8JpRvTyw$>
>>>>
>>>> Some free e-prints available at:
>>>>
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080__;!!Mih3wA!VAjnmwyXpGWMIoW8NDZ7kLmwjr4WafCMGPUUnEI85hfVCwOWYDMD5p-Y-Fubw1nT9y85QA$
>>>> /10749039.2020.1745847
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHP
>>>> MM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1745847__;Lw!!Mih3wA!RxSyHRy22k
>>>> iqZQHwsKuP3HGFuU9O2uo9DyVwSIIsNFfE0O3RpibgknJS735vbN8Ro16M0A$>
>>>>
>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works
>>>> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
>>>>
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VAjnmwyXpGWMIoW8NDZ7kLmwjr4WafCMGPUUnEI85hfVCwOWYDMD5p-Y-Fubw1k82QbfVA$
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270
>>>> __;!!Mih3wA!RxSyHRy22kiqZQHwsKuP3HGFuU9O2uo9DyVwSIIsNFfE0O3RpibgknJS735vbN-
>>>> 3hPm_Zw$>
>>>>
>>>
>
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