The World Health Organization somehow thinks that Monkeypox is a racist name, so they have renamed the disease to Mpox.

That strikes me as super-weird and racist.

The World Health Organization is renaming monkeypox as mpox, citing concerns the original name of the decades-old animal disease could be construed as discriminatory and racist. https://t.co/7arvnUmdyL

— The Associated Press (@AP) November 28, 2022

Back in the Dark Ages, it was indeed true that racists implied that Black people were less evolved than Whites, and would compare them to gorillas. That was a thing. As far as I know, that association exists mostly in the mind of Leftists these days.

It is in fact not so much a thing today. Most people actually associate monkeys with…monkeys. You know, those primates who scratch themselves inappropriately and fling poo at zoo attendees. No human being I know does such things past about 2 years old, and the racial makeup of the poo-flinging toddlers is every single one. All toddlers do that. Like little monkeys.

We even use “monkey” as an endearment. Because poo flinging and babies go together. We like babies, so we think monkeys are cute. This is how poo flinging is redeemed.

Pretty much the only people who think of monkeys being associated with race, not babies and poo, are the good folks at the World Health Organization and the CDC. They still seem to think that there is more than a passing relationship between monkeys and human beings blessed with an abundance of melanin. Melanin, it turns out, makes one more of a primate in their minds.

Following @WHO recommendations, @CDCgov will begin using the term #mpox.

We welcome and support the renaming to mpox to reduce stigma and barriers to care for those most impacted. https://t.co/qxRuFWm6cd

— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) November 29, 2022

Newsflash: all human beings are genetically related to primates, including monkeys. Only racist jerks think that being darker makes one less evolved.

The WHO disease naming types seem to be among those racist jerks, and therefore they have decided to emphasize that fact by renaming a disease to something more difficult to say, but less obviously primate-related.

The World Health Organization has renamed monkeypox as mpox, citing concerns the original name of the decades-old animal disease could be construed as discriminatory and racist.

The U.N. health agency said in a statement Monday that mpox was its new preferred name for monkeypox, saying that both monkeypox and mpox would be used for the next year while the old name is phased out.

WHO said it was concerned by the “racist and stigmatizing language” that arose after monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries. It said numerous individuals and countries asked the organization “to propose a way forward to change the name.”

In August, WHO began consulting experts about renaming the disease, shortly after the U.N. agency declared monkeypox’s spread to be a global emergency.

To date, there have been more than 80,000 cases identified in dozens of countries that had not previously reported the smallpox-related disease. Until May, monkeypox, a disease that is thought to originate in animals, was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond central and west Africa.

Outside of Africa, nearly all cases have been in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. Scientists believe monkeypox triggered outbreaks in Western countries after spreading via sex at two raves in Belgium and Spain. Vaccination efforts in rich countries, along with targeted control interventions, have mostly brought the disease under control after it peaked in the summer.

In Africa, the disease mainly affects people in contact with infected animals such as rodents and squirrels. The majority of monkeypox-related deaths have been in Africa, where there have been almost no vaccines available.

U.S. health officials have warned it may be impossible to eliminate the disease there, warning it could be a continuing threat mainly for gay and bisexual men for years to come.

Mpox was first named monkeypox in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a “pox-like” disease, although they are not thought to be the disease’s animal reservoir.

Although WHO has named numerous new diseases shortly after they emerged, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS and COVID-19, this appears to be the first time the agency has attempted to rechristen a disease decades after it was first named.

Numerous other diseases, including Japanese encephalitis, German measles, Marburg virus and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome have been named after geographic regions, which could now be considered prejudicial. WHO has not suggested changing any of those names.

Clearly the Associated Press is as “triggered” as I am about this bizarre name change. The author of the article actually goes out of his way to point out the hypocritical idiocy of this move.

Not only does it reveal a ridiculous level of wokery, it also seems to be completely unrelated to the true concerns of the WHO, which of course should be…eliminating the damn disease! Spending time imagining that others are nasty racists is a distraction from their actual job.

The great irony, of course, is that the prejudicial association between monkeypox and a particular group of people has nothing to do with race, but with a behaviorally defined group: homosexual men. That association is naturally made in people’s minds because the disease, in the West, is actually and genuinely associated with male homosexual sex. But the WHO naming committee can’t do anything about dispelling that association in people’s minds because it has nothing to do with the name in the first place. Not a single person I know has associated monkeypox with a racial group. The WHO just made that up.

The WHO, one would think, would worry less about potential wrongthink by people and more about actual morbidity and mortality among people suffering from an actual freaking disease, but apparently not.

Such mundane matters are beneath them, as they struggle to stamp out bad thoughts from random people around the world. People who turn out to be almost exclusively WHO and CDC officials who have racist thoughts.

I am glad they are focused on the important issues. Like their own prejudices and how others might share them.