Talk:COVID-19 pandemic/Archive 34

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Any scientist can add their scientific data about this claim...

CONTRIBS) 17:07, 16 MAY 2020 (UTC)
No reason to entertain this nonsense. RandomCanadian (talk

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

There is no scientific evidence that ANY virus could cause a disease. That is when a control group would be taken in consideration in the research of virus and what it does.

This is just found even out publicly and it really should be discussed openly. So it is really possible that this wikipedia page about Coronavirus could change dramatically when the germ theory is re-opened on discuss under a magnifier on openminded group of scientists.

Here´s some points given of the idea that germ theory could be totally scientifically wrong. www.whatreallymakesyouill.com/germtheory.html

Of course that also promotes a book but still makes a clear point that this idea should be openly re-viewed and talked aloud. 

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.211.135 (talk) 16:18, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The side you mentioned is crap. Any monkey can write something like this on the internet, so it is not a good idea to get your information from such dubious sites. TheImaCow (talk) 16:29, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 26 April 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Move to COVID-19 pandemic. While there is, of course, some disagreement, the strength – to say nothing of the number (which by my count exceed those against it by 2:1) – of the arguments in favor of this name outdo those against it. Redirects from "coronavirus"-related titles will still exist. As agreed in the sidebar, other related titles using the "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic" nomenclature should be moved in due time, likely with the assistance of a bot. -- tariqabjotu 01:12, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

2019–20 coronavirus pandemic → COVID-19 pandemic
– (The 30 day moratorium on page move discussion has now expired. It was well respected, but please do not use the notion that the name has been unchallenged for 30 days as justification for its retention.)

  1. An epidemic should be named for the disease, not the virus, and even less so for the large group of which the responsible virus is but one member.
  2. Using COVID-19 rather than coronavirus 2019 seems to be in keeping with item 2 of the
    COVID-19 project
    's consensuses, replicated at the top of this talk page. It has the additional benefit of not repeating so obviously the 2019 if the years are to be included as a prefix.
  3. I propose dropping the years prefix:
(a) because there will be disagreement as to whether it is accurate to talk of pandemic situation in 2019;
(b) because it is not absolutely clear that the pandemic will finish before 2020 does; and
(c) in the hope that whatever may happen with this virus in the future, it does not bring about a second full blown pandemic, and that such disambiguation would be redundant.
I would actually prefer to see three separate votes on these three issues (name for virus or disease/full or abbreviated name/with or without year(s) prefix), but RM just doesn't work that way, and parallel RfCs do not seem to be a good way to resolve issues in Wikipedia, but if there is a clear preference for that course of action, I would happily withdraw my RM. Kevin McE (talk) 12:35, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Survey

Survey (Requested move 26 April 2020)

Unless it has a name specific to the current disease, rather than the family of viruses. Kevin McE (talk) 19:17, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
You're confusing diseases and viruses. We could in theory move the article to "SARS-CoV-2 pandemic" if you wanted to name it after a more specific virus than "Coronavirus pandemic" (although in practice we shouldn't, as pandemics are named for diseases, not viruses, and COVID-19 is the disease name). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:37, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
No he isn't confusing anything. "COVID-19" is more specific than "coronavirus." I can't fathom any argument to the contrary. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 14:02, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose The date is correct now, no reason to question when it will end (if it ends later, then the date can be changed, but not now), and no reason to think that this will be the one and only Covid-19 pandemic (some scientists in fact think that it will recur). We don't involve ourselves in
    crystal gazing. Undecided on changing to Covid-19, but leaning keep on coronavirus on grounds of common usage. Hzh (talk
    ) 13:42, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
You are right, we should not involve ourselves in crystal ball gazing. In which case why are we currently claiming that there will be a finish to the event this year, and assuming that a disambiguation by year will be necessary? No-one can guarantee that a title will remain indefinitely, but one year that might be wrong is not less wrong than no year when one might subsequently be needed. Kevin McE (talk) 14:06, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
No one is claiming that it will end this year, only that the time period is correct as of now, a simple statement of fact. No assumption, no prediction, including any assumption that this will be the one and only Covid-19 pandemic. If the time period changes in the future, then it can be changed. There is also no point in keep changing the title, it is fine as it is. Hzh (talk) 14:27, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
When you say that the title is "fine as it is", is it your contention that it is correct and proper to name a pandemic after a loose group of viruses, rather than a disease? Kevin McE (talk) 14:51, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I have already said that I'm undecided on Covid-19, but leaning keep. See above. Hzh (talk) 16:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
But if you are "leaning keep", you are stating that it is acceptable to name an epidemic after a group of viruses. I am not meaning to pursue you, but I really don't see what grounds anyone has for that. Are you willing to share yours? Kevin McE (talk) 16:38, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
The explanation is already given (on grounds of common usage), read it before badgering others for a difference of opinion. Hzh (talk) 17:02, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Do you accept that this common usage is a common error, or at least a common lack of precision? An encyclopaedia should not be content to fall in with popular misconceptions, or widespread failings to distinguish between concepts. (As I have already said, I'm not trying to harangue you, Hzh, but I do want to present the counterargument to what you have been the first one to say.) Kevin McE (talk) 17:34, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I would not complained if you had shown that you actually read what I wrote (even after I ask you to read it) before you kept asking. You can say that the common usage is inaccurate, but using the virus to refer to the disease is so common that it can justifiably be used per
WP:COMMONNAME. See for example the BBC coverage - their news items are listed under coronavirus pandemic, and coronavirus is similarly used worldwide in many other major news outlets to describe the pandemic or outbreak - [1][2][3][4][5][6] so I don't think its use would be in any way controversial. Note also that COVID-19 is an acronym, and Wikipedia prefers full name instead of acronym for title. Hzh (talk
) 18:03, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for engaging. I really don't think that WP:COMMONNAME helps us, because there is no clear consensus in the media, and examples of 'COVID-19 pandemic' can be found in all of the sites you have referenced. But if we look to more informed sources, bmj.com has 'COVID-19 pandemic' in a 40:1 majority (and many of the exceptions are part of the phrase 'novel coronavirus'), 72:1 in the Irish Journal of Medical Science site, 24:1 in thelancet.com: there seems to be a clear preference among those that can be considered reliable in their medical expertise rather than those that are 'merely' reliable reporters of incident.
As to the acronym, I refer you to the consensus decision of the WikiProject that I mentioned in the opening post. Kevin McE (talk) 19:05, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I don't think leaving out the "2019-2020" is in any way predicting or assuming that there will be only one, just that there currently is only one. Generally, we don't disambiguate until after there's been more than one of something. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:53, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support - I agree with all 3 points raised and the conclusion. I disagree with the suggestion that "Coronavirus pandemic" is acceptable or meets the arguments set out by Kevin McE as it refers to a family of viruses, not the disease, even though it may represent common terminology. |→ Spaully ~talk~  13:47, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support: The
    WP:NAMINGCRITERIA strongly favor the shorter, more natural, common and concise wording—wording that we will not have to revisit if the pandemic extends into 2021. I also agree with Kevin McE's and Spaully's reasons. —RCraig09 (talk
    ) 15:57, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
— See the details of
WP:NAMINGCRITERIA by Benica11, below. —RCraig09 (talk
) 21:51, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Rename to COVID-19 pandemic per nom. --Soumyabrata stay at home 🏠 wash your hands to protect from COVID-19 😷 17:34, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per Spaully. "Coronavirus" alone is a vague term, as it also includes SARS, MERS, and several strains of the common cold.
    talk
    ) 21:52, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support (strongly) per nom and Spaully. More natural, more common, more specific, more concise, and more accurate. And if the pandemic extends past 2020, we won't need to keep changing the title every year (we wouldn't have to change the title ever again!). It'll also help the search box function, since most people aren't typing "2019–20" into their searches. (Secondly, on the topic of the abbreviation, "COVID-19" is more used and more recognizable than the long form of "Coronavirus disease 2019").
  • Neutral For the first two conclusion, I Support per nom. But I disagree to move to Coronavirus pandemic because it will better become a disambiguation page. 114.125.232.1 (talk) 21:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose as disruptive with little benefit. Enthusiasts unnecessarily even change the name of images after the previous rename. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't know what you mean by that, nor what it has to do with the merits or demerits of the current proposal. Kevin McE (talk) 21:55, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose per other editors. It comes as more disruptive. 36.77.134.116 (talk) 21:47, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support The nomination and supporters are more convincing than the opposition to this point. "COVID-19 pandemic" is more concise and precise than "2019-20 coronavirus pandemic". As for "disruption", both titles will lead to the same location and we can update internal links easily. That's not a good reason to not move the page and its associated pages. – Muboshgu (talk)`
  • Support COVID by far the most searched term now.... well besides 3 misspelling of Coronavirus....lol.--Moxy 🍁 22:24, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Neutral - The proposed new title is indeed in some respects "more natural, more common, more specific, more concise, and more accurate." However, I am persuaded by other editors that the move (renaming) will open a hornet's nest of necessary (for consistency) moves/renaming requests, discussions, and attempts to reach consensus for each article with "2019–2020 coronavirus pandemic" in its title. Edit on 27 Apr 2020 @ 22:25 (UTC)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 23:08, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    • Actually, there's already a strong consensus building (based on your very astute comment in the section below) that if this page moves, all of the pages with it in the title will also be moved. There won't need to be a billion move requests or individual discussions. Also, pretty sure the batch of pages could easily be moved by bot. Paintspot Infez (talk) 13:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
@Paintspot: Ah, I did not know that could be done. I thought each article would have to undergo the renaming and moving process individually. Along those lines, I bet that a lot of editors are like me, i.e., they don't know about the possibility of a 'mass move (renaming)' [my term]. I'm thinking that a separate RM, which proposes "moving" (renaming) all the articles with "2019–2020 coronavirus pandemic" in the title—at the same time, en mass—is needed. But I defer to more knowledgeable editors on that point. ¶ Thank you for your kind words! :0) All the best   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 13:14, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
@Beniica11: I agree with most of these things, however I think we should leave the date in. It gives the pandemic context within history -- in the future it will probably become less well-known so we'll want to have the date it happened in. See 2009 swine flu pandemic which I used for my example earlier, should we rename that "Swine flu pandemic"? sam1370 (talk) 03:54, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
@Sam1370: I guess the issue is that some similar articles don’t have a year like Spanish flu, and the -19 in COVID-19 is the year anyways. But we might want to add a full year eventually to give historical context if future generations begin to forget about this pandemic. Benica11 (talk) 04:50, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
@
WP:CRYSTAL applies, the name COVID-19 pandemic is clear and unambiguous for now. I'll change my stance. sam1370 (talk
) 04:55, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I am intrigued that as a doctor of medicine you consider it to "make sense" that a pandemic carry the name of a group of viruses, rather than the name of the disease. Are there precedents or reasons for this in the medical literature> Would this be normal practice in medical nomenclature? Kevin McE (talk) 08:54, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm also a doctor of medicine (working in critical care), and incidentally, I've also worked on mathematical models of infectious disease. FWIW, I agree with you, it does not "make sense." It is not regular practice in the medical literature I've seen where the virus per se is alternatively referred to as SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 (despite the latter being technically incorrect). Here, the guidelines are clear and unambiguous per
WP:COMMONNAME. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk
) 12:34, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
The full name of the disease is "Coronavirus disease 2019" We added the "2019-20" to the front and we added pandemic after. We than dropped "disease" and "2019" as "2019-20 coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic" was too long. WHO uses "Coronavirus disease pandemic"[7] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:57, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
But do you accept that in changing from "coronavirus disease 2019" to "coronavirus", albeit for admirable motives of brevity and avoidance of duplication, you have changed what identifies this pandemic from the name of a disease (the principle applied by WHO) to that of a group of viruses? That is what is semantically untenable, although it is a mistake that Wikipedia has been far from alone in making. Do you also accept that the principles of brevity and avoidance of duplication are also met by the current proposal? And if you do, what is your objection to the current proposal? Kevin McE (talk) 14:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Not sure we should use the abbreviation rather than at least part of the full name. There are trade offs between the two. My position in one direction over the other however is not that strong. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:38, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Not sure what 'adjust'ment on the part of editors would be required: there will be residual redirect links for your watched/contributions pages. Kevin McE (talk) 15:08, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
There would be broken links here and there, and there is a chance that templates would not transclude properly.
LSGH (talk) (contributions
) 03:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Let's not assume that this will be the only outbreak or pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 will be involved in. There would still be a need to disambiguate by placing 2020 or 2019–20 in page titles, but it would be quite unpleasant to the eye if the page titles began with 2020 COVID-19 or 2019–20 COVID-19, which, in the first place, results from how the WHO wanted to name the disease.
LSGH (talk) (contributions
) 03:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
As stated, it is no less crystal balling to assume that it will end this year than to assume that year disambiguation will be needed. And it is Crystal balling to assume that year disambiguation is needed. Kevin McE (talk) 15:08, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
"Coronavirus" is less descriptive than "COVID-19" - the majority of us have suffered colds caused by coronaviruses, but most of us have not had COVID-19. Magic9mushroom (talk) 19:48, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
It is crystal balling to want to keep the newer name "in case of future pandemics". Let's use COVID-19 pandemic for now as it is concise. We can rename the page if there is another pandemic. sam1370 (talk) 02:09, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Just a couple more Google search results - for me "covid-19 pandemic" (with quotes) gets 139,000,000 results, and "coronavirus pandemic" (again with quotes) gets 124,000,000 results. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:23, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Per Veritycheck, it's more common and concise. Bluesatellite (talk) 07:22, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. "COVID-19 pandemic" is technically the correct name, and also in widespread usage already (although "coronavirus pandemic" is somewhat more common, but lacking the necessary precision). We don't actually need to specify the year because it is already implied by "COVID-19", so this is just adding unnecessary clutter to the title. If there will be another coronavirus disease in the future (unfortunately quite likely), it won't be named "COVID-19", so there is no problem with ambiguation. Also, changing the title to get rid of the abbreviated year range "2019–20" would improve compliance with our naming conventions per MOS, according to which "2019–2020" would be the preferred form - but this would likely end up as "2019–2021", anyway. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:43, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose coronavirus is more widely used than than COVID. Vpab15 (talk) 14:11, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
You are comparing apples with banans (incompletely spelled bananas) (group of viruses with incomplete name of one disease). The relevant comparison is "coronavirus pandemic" vs "COVID-19 pandemic". The error of naming the pandemic for the virus group is undoubtedly widespread, but that does not mean that we should fall prey to it: we should apply sound semantic principles in keeping with accurate professional (professional epidemiologists, not professional journalists)practice. WP:COMMONNAME does not give a clear answer, but when we are faced with a choice between correct and incorrect usage, Commonname is not the policy we should be looking to. Kevin McE (talk) 14:41, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
"Fruit" is more widely used than "Banana". Should we move that article to "Long yellow fruit"? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME says we should "prefers the name that is most commonly used ". Right now coronavirus is more widely used than COVID-19 and is used to refer to the current pandemic and its effects, not to the family of viruses. Vpab15 (talk
) 17:56, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
That is some rather selective quoting. It also says, "When there is no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used for the topic by these sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering these criteria directly," and "Editors should also consider all five of the criteria for article titles outlined above," the five criteria referenced in each case being those with which Benica11 has dealt with very efficiently above. WP:COMMONNAME also says, "inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable source," which is the case here. Kevin McE (talk) 18:11, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
What data supports "coronavirus is more widely used than than COVID"? Is that based perhaps on your feeling or where you live? Google shows the following results: - "Coronavirus" about 2,380,000,000 results, while "covid-19" about 3,000,000,000. Veritycheck✔️ (talk) 19:48, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
You are right about google search results, which I found surprising. However, checking various news sites, it seems coronavirus is much preferred to COVID-19. Checking main page of various sites, no mention of COVID in [8]. For [9][10][11][12][13] use is mixed, but coronavirus is more common by a factor of 4 or more. I'd say the pandemic has affected many aspects of life and "coronavirus" is now used in a much wider sense than a virus or group of viruses. Vpab15 (talk) 20:46, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. FFS, the fact that the moratorium has expired does not mean we immediately start an RM. Generally when there's a moratorium of any length, we only consider subsequent changes if something major has cheaanged in real life. Anyway, if you really need a reason not to move this, then pick any of those above - (1) although "COVID-19" has come into the lexicon, the common name for the pandemic in the public consciousness and in reliable sources is still "coronavirus", and that word needs to be in the title; (2) even if the proposed name or others were marginally better, the time we've spent so far arguing over this is excessive. We picked a name in Feb after painstaking argument, and it's not productive to revisit that, that's why the moratorium was imposed.; (3) having the dates is useful.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
You got the moratorium you asked for, it was respected. Please respect the right to do now what there is no longer a moratorium against.
1) Common usage, as has been demonstrated in this discussion, is clearly split, but there is an inportant semantic principle at stake which you have presented no argument against. To include the phrase 'coronavirus pandemic' in the title is contrary to the consensus statement presented at the top of this page.
2) To persist with semantic error because we have been making that error for a coupe of months already is entirely contradictory to encyclopaedic purpose. We are talking about page titles that should be in place for many years to come, so let's not look uninformed forever for the sake of what has been the case for a couple of months.
3) What anyone considers 'useful' is an entirely objective opinion, others are at least equally entitled to consider it redundant. However, the dates are as yet unknown, the year of emergence of the disease is implied in the proposed title and I think we can be confident that most informed readers seeing the name COVID-19 will know what the 19 refers to, and there is no naming policy that requires dating of events in their page title (should Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand be at 1914 Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand?). Kevin McE (talk) 14:41, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I'd like to add on to your third point: should
WP:COMMONNAME applies here, as "COVID-19 pandemic" is both common, accurate, and precise. sam1370 (talk
) 18:43, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
This is an interesting point. It made me question what was the exact name of the 9/11 page. It is "
9/11" also redirects to it). It would be accurate and even more precise (mainly because every year has an eleventh day in the month of September), but I don't think we should rename it to "2001 September 11 attacks", nor "11 September 2001 attacks", nor "September 11, 2001, attacks", nor "2001-September-11 attacks", nor "Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001", nor other similar combinations. So, I agree with Kevin McE and sam1370's justifications. If it ever occurs another series of attacks on the 11th day of September of another year, I promise that I will reconsider it. ACLNM (talk
) 22:03, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Usage has already shifted from the generic to the specific term. Moving gives us now the advantage of getting rid of the prefix (and hope there will be no second pandemic of COVID-19) Agathoclea (talk) 14:54, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support removing dates. They only cause confusion and make the article difficult to search for. As of now, this is the only COVID-19 pandemic in history. If there is a later pandemic of the same disease (as opposed to a second or third wave of this one), we can talk about dates then. Scolaire (talk) 15:04, 28 April 2020 (UTC) [Edit] Support "COVID-19 pandemic" rather than "Coronavirus 2019 pandemic". The disease is commonly known as "COVID-19" or "the coronavirus", not as "Coronavirus 2019". It is officially known as "Coronavirus Disease 2019", so "Coronavirus 2019" fails here as well. Scolaire (talk) 13:42, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, coronaviruses are a group of viruses, of which SARS-CoV-2 is one, which causes COVID-19. -- Jeandré, 2020-04-28t17:14z
  • Oppose Everyone here speaks about corona, nobody does about some kind of covid with some kind of number (where some people even guessed it was the 19. kind of virus, instead of the year 2019). Please keep in mind that English is not only used in the US (where even "Wuhan flu" was suggested!?). Speaking for Europe, it's corona which is in the news. And nobody knows what COVID stands for (and that it must be upper case), while everyone knows the crown shape of the virus by now. --Traut (talk) 18:38, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Who is the everyone you are referring to? It’s certainly not me. Additionally, where is here? Wikipedia’s role isn’t to set standards, but rather to reflect what is in use elsewhere. Your nobody doesn’t include me or others who do know what COVID 19 stands for. Finally, not everyone knows that corona means crown. Sweeping generalisations don’t make for good arguments. Veritycheck✔️ (talk) 20:08, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
You ACTUALLY do know what COVID stands for? But you do not know that it is COVID-19, not COVID 19? I must admit, I did not know what COVID stands for. I looked it up. But then, why isn't it CoViD-19? WHO themselves sometimes name it COVID 2019! And if you want to be precise, SARS-CoV-2 would be even more precise! --Traut (talk) 20:39, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I know about several European countries. You live in Italy? I checked some of the most important Italian newspapers. All name coronavirus on the main page, none COVID-19. Where is your here? --Traut (talk) 22:37, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Are these English newspapers? Anyhow if you look at English speaking countries will often use COVID. It sounds rather cool in an Australian accent. Agathoclea (talk) 13:00, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
@Traut, I'm also included in your "nobody" and I'm also in Europe, in a small country called Portugal. Here, within the limited range of possibilities, the media try to be as scientific as possible. Orally, they refer to the virus as "the/this coronavirus/virus", and call the disease by the correct term "COVID-19" or by "COVID" (incomplete, but easier to say 150 times in a 30-minute segment of news; when saying "19", they usually say it in the portuguese form "dezanove"); in titles and infographics, they usually use "COVID-19" and "coronavirus" (as in "Today's COVID-19 cases/numbers" and "Coronavirus Restrictions"). In the printing press, many articles try to introduce the different concepts in a way such as "This pandemic of the disease COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, a virus from the same family of the virus SARS-CoV, the virus that was responsible for the SARS outbreak in 2002" (here's an example[1] from an article written by the secretary-general of ANMSP, the portuguese association of public health medical doctors). Outside the media, in everyday speech, people refer to the virus and the disease interchangingly, in the forms "the virus/coronavirus" and "the COVID/COVID-19" (both frequent), "the corona" (more informal and less frequent), and "the SARS-CoV-2" (the correct name of the virus; rarer but more frequently used by more literate people, i.e., health professionals and scientists). ACLNM (talk) 23:27, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I checked headlines on cmjornal.pt (CORONA VIRUS), destak.pt (COVID-19, COVID 19), record.pt (Coronavírus) and publico.pt (Coronavírus, naming Covid-19 and covid-19). If you drop the "-19", COVID becomes exactly as inspecific as corona virus itself - and people start dropping the number. That's ok, but if anyone speaks about corona, it's just the virus that we have for the very moment. It's up to the specialists to refer exactly to SARS-CoV-2 in order not to confuse it with any other virus. My vote would be for the "2020 corona pandemic" (as
1918 flu pandemic etc. --Traut (talk
) 12:03, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Calling this corona pandemic would be a terrible idea. Very few sources call it anything close. Heck for me, one of the top news stories at the moment seems to be about a new born baby called corona. Nil Einne (talk) 13:50, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
I feel it's unfortunate that so much different aspects are merged for this move. I do not like the 2019-20 prefix myself. But I do not understand why you vote for "2" since no one suggests to name this "coronavirus 19". For me it's either to use "corona" vs. COVID-19. Or to drop the 2019-2020 prefix (who knows whether it will remain the 2019-21 or more?). Bit it's not about coronavirus 2019. --Traut (talk) 22:04, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I offered in the OP to withdraw this if there were a preference for three RfCs, to discuss the three elements to the change, but in c50 replies you are the first to suggest any dissatisfaction with dealing with it all in one discussion. Kevin McE (talk) 08:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
And the article can explain clearly in its opening sentence where the name COVID-119 comes from so that there is no need for that error to persist. But explanation/education is dealt with in the articles, not in their titles. Kevin McE (talk) 08:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
This is not really a problem because there are bots which can carry out most of the renaming, and, of course, there will be redirects to catch the old title(s) as well. So, nobody would miss the article. It is just that the article as is resides under its technical correct name, which I consider highly desirable for an encyclopedia. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:50, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose for consistency and to avoid confusion. Additionally, I have seen some people claim that COVID-19 is a more common way to refer to the virus than coronavirus nowadays. This has not been my personal experience; in my social circles as well as on my local news it is still almost exclusively referred to as coronavirus. Teddybearearth (talk) 00:08, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
But nobody should be referring to the virus as COVID-19: that is a name for the disease. And if in your community the virus is (not incorrectly, but rather imprecisely) referred to as coronavirus, that is no justification for naming the pandemic after a virus rather than a disease. Kevin McE (talk) 08:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • COVID-19 is permadated by the -19, which means 2019. Its start. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:12, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • The COVID-19 *pandemic* was declared by the WHO in 2020, that's the start. If the article were simply titled "COVID-19" (thus covering the whole timeline) then the start would be 2019. Cordially, History DMZ (talk)+(ping) 06:52, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
So even if you are not happy with the proposal, you believe that the current naming for the page is wrong, and therefore that it should be changed? Kevin McE (talk) 08:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Kevin McE, the proposal that you presented is not wrong but it is incomplete. It presents a dilemma: using COVID-19 in the title is correct, and so is including the year 2020. Problem becomes the flow/readability of "2020 COVID-19 pandemic". Then if we try abbreviating to "2020 COVID pandemic" that may cause confusion and give the impression there is a covid-19 and a covid-20. Finally, "2020 coronavirus pandemic" solves some issues but raises others that were already mentioned by fellow users here. What I support is an easy-to-find practical article name *for now*, and a more detailed encyclopedic article name after this global crisis ends. Cordially, History DMZ (talk)+(ping) 11:57, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
There is no formulation that is totally future proof. Maybe (and let's all hope) there will be no further recurrence of a pandemic of this disease: in that case the current suggestion meets all requirements, and needs no year prefix to identify it. Maybe it will recur, but will have mutated to the extent that the disease is renamed (COVID-25 or whatever it may be): again, the proposed new name will be sufficient to identify it. Maybe there will be a second major outbreak, and we will need to specify, presumably with a year prefix, the extent of the incident we are living through with the benefit of hindsight to know whether it is generally accepted that what happened in December was the start of the pandemic, and knowledge of when it finished. Maybe opinion and/or expert advice will turn against the idea of 2019 as having seen anything of the pandemic, which would affect the present formulation (and many others) but not mine. And maybe it will drag on beyond the end of this year, in which case my proposal is unaffected, but the current name, crystal balling a conclusion in 2020, would need changing, as would all the related pages. Kevin McE (talk) 13:40, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment: This isn't Simple English Wikipedia. It would be better to put a redirect instead. However, we still need to know which term is more recognizable, COVID-19 or Coronavirus. My idea is that whichever term is more recognizable, we use that as the mainspace article name.
    talk
    ) 05:34, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support - moving it to "COVID-19 pandemic" is a much better title as mentioned by many people above. It's shorter, precise, concise, it is more accurate since it is using its established name "COVID-19", instead of "coronavirus" which refers to multiple other viruses, and by omitting the date range, we won't have to keep moving the article if the pandemic extends into another year. --TheSameGuy (talk) 06:19, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. Having the year prefix is clumsy. Ljgua124 (talk) 07:08, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Coronavirus is too general; COVID-19 is more specific. Jam ai qe ju shikoni (talk) 09:48, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
    • talk
      ) 11:57, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
@RareButterflyDoors I don't see how that puts my argument down. Did you perhaps mean "Coronavirus" and misspelled it as "COVID-19"? Jam ai qe ju shikoni (talk
) 14:13, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
No, I meant that COVID-19 is a more recognizable term to name the article.
talk
) 01:19, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
WP:PRECISE. Jam ai qe ju shikoni (talk
) 11:52, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per common name. TheGreatSG'rean (talk) 12:05, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Should be as per the common name of the disease, not the year. Vikram Maingi (talk) 12:51, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support for the many reasons given above. "COVID-19" is not only more concise, it's more accurate than "coronavirus" (which gives a false impression about coronaviruses in general; they're one of the viruses responsible for the common cold!)...however, I'd prefer keeping the date prefix. "2019-20 COVID-19 Pandemic" would be best IMO. Nevertheless, "COVID-19 Pandemic" is better than what we have now. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 12:25, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Try again in a few months time if "COVID-19" is really the most common way of referring to the pandemic at that time. Round my neck of the woods, "coronavirus" is still what it's generally called. Both titles are probably acceptable, which means that whichever was originally used should remain for simplicity's sake. 31.53.12.152 (talk) 13:30, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as specificity (from other coronavirus disease i.e. the common cold) is required. Magic9mushroom (talk) 14:13, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Strongly support as I have done since january, as my first edits on the issue before becoming a prolific editor in Feb- early march. For the same reasoning, the current name is not
    WP:COMMONNAME as many including myself predicted, is COVID-19. I recognize that according to the WHO, that is technically an abbreviation. But they intended for it to become the common name, and it has, we must follow. --Almaty (talk
    ) 14:22, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as per common name Geekgecko (talk) 15:52, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose per
    WP:COMMONNAME. --Wolbo (talk
    ) 16:41, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
At this point in time, they're seemingly tied for which is the common name. (As said above, "..."covid-19 pandemic" (with quotes) shows 149,000,000 results to sites such as FAO.org, Unicef.org, Eui.eu, Unv.org, Time.com, MIT.edu, WHO.int, theGuardian.com. Conversely, "coronavirus pandemic" (again with quotes) gets 124,000,000 results and "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic" has a mere 259,000 results from largely wiki based sites.") Additionally, since they're generally tied for which is the common name, it would make more sense to use the more correct, more specific, more concise, more accurate, more natural name. Paintspot Infez (talk) 16:52, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Nonsense, a quick tour of leading English speaking news(paper) website shows coronavirus is used much more frequently, and much more prominently, than Covid-19. It is nowhere near equal.--Wolbo (talk) 17:27, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Covid stands for the disease, and is the most specific,
WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. Search count for 'coronavirus' (alone) is irrelevant. —RCraig09 (talk
) 17:45, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, subsequent waves (in the fall and winter) would be considered part of the same ongoing pandemic and be covered by this article. Presuming that this pandemic ends with an effective vaccine and/or herd immunity (in a year? a year and a half?), this would indeed be the sole COVID-19 pandemic in history. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 19:11, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.publico.pt/2020/04/08/sociedade/opiniao/planeamento-saude-tempo-pandemia-1911338
  2. ^ Shunqing Xu, Yuanyuan Li, Beware of the second wave of COVID-19, The Lancet, 8 April 2020
  3. ^ J. Edward Moreno, Fauci: Second wave of coronavirus 'inevitable', The Hill, 29 April 2020
  • Support Recognized name for this specific virus and pandemic. Coronavirus too generic and refers to all viruses of this type. Primecoordinator (talk) 18:45, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support The title is too long and COVID-19 is the exact term while coronavirus is a more generic term relating to a family of viruses. Alexceltare2 (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support COVID-19 is the disease. Furthermore, most of the pandemic (nearly all of it) has happened this year, only the very beggining was in 2019. Naming it "2019-2020...pandemic" would be confusing for future readers, this is more accurate.
    talk
    ) 19:40, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support The current title is a compromise from before any single name was common, now that COVID-19 has become the
    talk
    ) 00:41, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support I support COVID-19 as it simpler and its more widely recognize.In my country at least they call it covid or covid 19 in most news. Like a user above mention we dont call the spanish flu the 1918 pandemic etc, so this case should not be different. --Allancalderini12 (talk) 01:30, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • For those new editors wanting to join the discussion, here's a list of arguments made by editors. This is very long lol
    • Under Support:
      • Concise name, per
        WP:CONCISE
      • Recognizable term for it, per
        WP:COMMONNAME
      • Eliminates the need for changing the article name every year
      • Prevents nonsense terms like "Chinese Virus" or "Chinese Flu"
      • More specific; coronavirus is a general term, per
        WP:PRECISION
    • Under Oppose:
      • Too technical
      • Already easy to understand
      • More descriptive
      • Recognizable term for it, per
        WP:COMMONNAME

I think that's all the arguments I can find. This is just to let new editors who want to take part of the discussion know how the discussion is ongoing, because this thread is REALLY long. You can change this if you want. Anyway stan Jimmy Wales

talk
) 02:45, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Biased list, some have used
WP:COMMONNAME to argue against changing the name. It can be said that both terms (COVID-19 and coronavirus) are equally commonly used. Changing the article name every year is a very minor issue that we won't have to worry about for eight months. I don't see how changing the title to COVID-19 prevents nonsense terms. Another valid argument against changing the title is people don't realise the 19 in COVID-19 stands for 2019 and therefore it will sound like a general title if it doesn't have the year attached. 31.53.12.152 (talk
) 03:13, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
By the way, it might be worth checking Google Trends on this issue of which is more common. "Coronavirus" seems to be a far, far more popular search term than COVID-19, both in the US and globally. I have to say COVID-19 sounds elitist and technical. 31.53.12.152 (talk) 03:27, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
I have mentioned that you can change the list. It was really hard to get a grasp of what arguments editors say since it was very long.
talk
) 03:58, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment If, God forbid, another outbreak or pandemic of COVID-19 will happen in the future, then we will have to rename articles such that we have to disambiguate using the year or years that it would occur. The name COVID-19 may sound common but it would confuse readers because there is no indication of when that outbreak or pandemic happened if there was no year in the title. The -19 refers to 2019, but the vast majority of countries are experiencing this pandemic in 2020. Also, the name coronavirus is generic but it is now used mostly as an alternative to saying COVID or COVID-19, so the other coronaviruses would stand less in name recall than this current one. Also, we have the article about the
    LSGH (talk) (contributions
    ) 05:58, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, that was an "outbreak," not a "pandemic." The latter is more unique and perhaps less likely to recur. Sahitana (talk) 19:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
But what if another outbreak happens? The possibility of it happening again could not be left out.
LSGH (talk) (contributions
) 05:14, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Edit to note - "2019-20 COVID-19 pandemic" also sounds okay to me if people really want the years. BlackholeWA (talk) 12:30, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment "COVID-19" is the official name of the disease and its pandemic should be named "COVID-19 pandemic". But in some ways "coronavirus pandemic" is more acceptable to the general public. Peter Wu (2019) 13:12, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Despite WHO acknowledged the pandemic as "COVID-19", most of the worst effects were witnessed in 2020 and it won't be accurate to rename it as COVID-19 pandemic. The current title 2019-20 coronavirus pandemicis very clear to the viewers and certain that the current pandemic originated in 2019 and the worst effects are witnessed in 2020. Abishe (talk) 13:23, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
COVID-19 stands for "COronaVIrus Disease 2019". The disease emerged in 2019. If it were called COVIP-19 then you might have a point, but it's not. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:32, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Neutral per all reasons by users. Whether it will move the name of the article or not, I have to play safe to vote neutral and the majority votes will be the result.
    talk
    ) 13:43, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, coronavirus is a type of virus where there are lots of different viruses making up this family typing. MERS, SARS and flu viruses being a handful of them. The particular virus in question is SARS-2 which causes the Covid-19 disease. It is this disease which the pandemic has been called for. The media latched on to the term coronavirus while the WHO came up with a name for this strand and the disease it causes. Furthermore, a pandemic was not really declared fully until 2020 so the the article's original title makes little sense. → Lil-℧niquԐ1 - (Talk) - 14:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support in addition to being more concise and aligning with the COVID-19 WikiProject title, it's hard to say whether this will end in 2020, plus this pandemic refers to a specific type of coronavirus. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 15:17, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support As of now, I think it is quite clear that the term "COVID-19 pandemic" is 1) more accurate than the current title, and 2) at least as commonly used as the current title, if not even more common. A quick Google search I did for "COVID-19 pandemic" yields 522,000,000 results, while "coronavirus pandemic" yields 510,000,000 results, and "2019–2020 coronavirus pandemic" yields only 354,000,000 results. Note that I have added "-wikipedia" to these search terms to exclude results related to that keyword.
    💬
    15:26, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Opoose. Would support move to "Coronavirus pandemic". It is the common name and alleviates the need for a future discussion if the pandemic extends beyond the end of 2020, which it quite likely may. Ergo Sum 20:14, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, indeed. Coltsfan (talk) 21:13, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, the last fortnight has finally bought it fairly clearly into the majority usage in media, and then common, usage. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Everyone just knows it as the Coronavirus, so i support the name Coronavirus pandemic. If another coronavirus pandemic occurs in the future, we can then just add a time period (2019-20, 2019-21, etc) to the title of this article. Pancho507 (talk) 04:42, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
I would have to question wheth you have read the proposal. Kevin McE (talk) 08:00, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per nom, it's precise and concise. -Abhishikt (talk) 07:25, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per discussions above, it's more concise the year isn't needed as this is the only COVID-19 pandemic so far. Nooby person1 (talk) 13:17, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. My reflex reaction was to support, but it would be inconsistent with what the community has done in the past for SARS and MERS, both of which redirect to more specific titles. Obviously, "COVID-19" should absolutely redirect to the current article title, and IMO that's sufficient. PKT(alk) 15:15, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
COVID-19 is an entirely separate article about the disease specifically, not the pandemic. It definitely shouldn't redirect here. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 14:07, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Actually, "COVID-19" is more specific than just "coronavirus". "Coronavirus" is a broad type of viruses (one that actually includes SARS and MERS), while COVID-19 is this specific viral disease. So if your argument is that the disease name should be more specific, it would make sense to have it at COVID-19 (also, we typically name pandemics atfer the disease, not the type of virus). Paintspot Infez (talk)
Understood, but the current title is not just "coronavirus", it is "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic", which is much more specific. Equally as specific as COVID-19, IMO. PKT(alk) 20:55, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support As others mentoned earler: More natural, more common, more specific, more concise, and more accurate.Tomeasy T C 18:19, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support More specific. PKdbz (talk) 19:11, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Yep, it's shorter and more specific. Dyaluk08 (talk) 19:16, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose (both suggestions) Reputable new sources, such as The Guardian; the BBC; the New York Times; the Wall Street Journal; the Associated Press overwhelmingly use "coronavirus", not "COVID-19". I disagree with the points made removing dates since there are other epidemics (SARS, MERS) which were caused by coronaviruses (the difference between "epidemic" and "pandemic" being one of scale, and an average reader might be otherwise mislead) so we should seek to abide by both
    WP:COMMONNAME and the Precision criteria. 107.190.33.254 (talk
    ) 20:46, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
These headlines from The Guardian; the BBC; the New York Times; the Wall Street Journal; the Associated Press all use COVID-19. Veritycheck✔️ (talk) 21:40, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the IP user means by 'both suggestions' as only one is under discussion here. SARS and MERS are appropriately used with epi/pandemic, as they are the names for the respective diseases: the issue is not the frequency with which the word "corovirus" is used, but the juxtaposition of 'coronavirus' with 'pandemic'. Kevin McE (talk) 23:18, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
@Kevin Mce: There's your suggestion to rename this to "COVID-19" (or whatever is the exact variant); and then there's another suggestion at the very top of this survey to drop the year without renaming (see comment by User:Crouch, Swale). As for the headlines, the Guardian uses "coronavirus" in their rolling update feeds; and on the page you link, everything except for that one headline is "Coronavirus" (i.e. "Coronavirus"; "Coronavirus explained"; "... UK"; "... around the world" - you get the point). The BBC seems to be using COVID-19 to refer to the disease; but on their homepage (which I linked) it's very clearly "Coronavirus pandemic". NYT: "We are providing free access to the most important news and useful guidance on the coronavirus outbreak". I'll spare examples for the others since it is the same outcome. So essentially my point is that both variants might come up in different article headlines and such, but the term used for overall coverage is much more frequently "coronavirus" than "COVID-19". 107.190.33.254 (talk) 01:07, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
The only suggestion being discussed in this thread is the headline one: if Crouch, Swale wishes to start another RM, that is up to him/her. Several people have presented google counts that are so close as to show that there is no overwhelming predominance of either, and so we should consider that WP:COMMONNAME is not a simple count, 52-48 is sufficient to mess everything up, referendum. I'll quote it again: "When there is no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used for the topic by these sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering these criteria directly." So given the lack of a decisive count, or even of consistency in the publications you cite, do you have an argument based on the main principles of WP:TITLE, which recognisability, naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency? Kevin McE (talk) 10:57, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, there are a few comments saying "support change to 'Coronavirus pandemic'" or something of a similar nature. Back to the main topic: a simple count of google search results is not a definitive criteria, see
WP:GOOGLETEST. A search on google trends (comparison here) also shows that "coronavirus" is still the preferred term worldwide (by nearly a factor of 2 to 1) when compared with "covid". A search for the terms with "pandemic" appended is even more lopsided
. In any case, even if we were to, for a moment, agree that these results might be inconclusive, my point that it's the term favoured by reliable sources, as shown above, stands. Is there any new sources which you have found which uses "COVID-19" for it's main page coverage in the fashion that I have shown above? Popularity is not just a simple headcount.
The other criteria where "COVID-19" might otherwise outperform is precision (if you intend that articles about diseases be named after the disease), though then again that's not universal, for example
WP:CRYSTAL? - change in the status quo). 107.190.33.254 (talk
) 16:21, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
"And for the last time"...Since when has one editor had final say on article names? And totally missing the main point, which is not primarily the year but the misnaming of the pandemic after a loose group of viruses, rather than the disease. Kevin McE (talk) 00:47, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Current title doesn't specify the virus strain, making it ambiguous if future coronavirus-related outbreaks were to occur. Also, getting rid of the years from the title would be beneficial for two reasons: 1) The WHO officially recognized this as a pandemic in 2020, and having 2019 in the title would confuse readers; 2) There is a possibility that this pandemic might last beyond 2020, which would warrant the current title to be repeatedly changed. Tomatoexpress (talk) 00:25, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per above. Sawol (talk) 03:46, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose, as I consider it disruptive.
    WP:COMMONNAME doesn't really help us here either, this seems to be an exception. Non-Wikipedians wanting information about the pandemic are comparatively more likely to type "Coronavirus pandemic" into Wikipedia's search bar, (redirecting them to this article), than they are to type "COVID-19 Pandemic" into the search bar. Referring to the disease as "Coronavirus" has become the norm for general citizens, whilst scientists and the media tend to refer to it as "COVID-19". Not sure how well my opinions will be received by everyone (this seems to be a contentious issue) but here goes nothing. Sean Stephens (talk
    ) 06:06, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
You say that COMMONNAME doesn't help us here (I agree, counts that are not filtered to specialist sites seem very close, and WP:COMMONNAME defers to the 5 other principles anyway) and then base your argument entirely on COMMONNAME. Kevin McE (talk) 10:57, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Appreciate your perspective, but I have to point out that your claim about what wikipedians are likely to type in the search bar is offered without evidence and completely contradicted by google search results; "COVID-19 pandemic" gives me >20 million more results than "coronavirus pandemic." This is not a trivial discrepancy. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 14:00, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per above. James (T • C) • 07:39, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support This move should of been done awhile ago. This obviously the name to stay and it should be the final name. This is first step on addressing Wikipedia misinformation on the COVID-19 Pandemic on Wikipedia. Regice2020 (talk) 08:03, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support There is no need to specify the years as this is the only existent COVID-19 pandemic, plus the proposed title allows for the possibility for the situation to last beyond 2020 and the related articles should follow suit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 9March2019 (talk • contribs) 12:58, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support COVID-19 is the most accurate and precise description of the virus, as Regice2020 noted. Plumber (talk) 09:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment I have read from those supporting the move that COVID-19 is more common. However, as several people have shown here with links, almost all media favour coronavirus over COVID-19, even if usage is mixed. Can someone please present some evidence that COVID-19 is preferred by any media or news site? Otherwise I think it is wrong to use
    Wikipedia:COMMONNAME as an argument for the move. Vpab15 (talk
    ) 11:38, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Not correct. As has been stated multiple times, "COVID-19 pandemic" turns up more search results than "coronavirus pandemic" (> 20 million more for me). Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 13:56, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Neutral I am only concerned about that visitors will find the information. Since both names are roughly equally common, it should be fine as long as redirect links are used. David A (talk) 12:52, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment to the opposers – I think this article should be renamed COVID-19 pandemic (or coronavirus pandemic) without the mention of the year until there will be another COVID-19 (or any kind of corona disease) pandemic. --Soumyabrata talk contribs subpages 15:02, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support COVID-19 (or Covid-19) has become the common name, and it is technically more correct here since this article is about the disease, not the virus. -- MelanieN (talk) 15:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Unfortunately, you are perfectly right: It's not only COVID-19, which should be common nowawdays, but also "Covid-19", "covid-19", "COVID 19", "COVID 2019" etc. dropping the "19" more and more. Only few people mind that "COVID" names the disease, but not the virus. No one ever explained to me why it is not CoViD. But all this misspelling makes me doubt that COVID-19 is used more precisely than coronavirus. --Traut (talk) 17:53, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Given that there is no term "corona" separate from "coronavirus" in this field, there is absolutely no reason why there would be a lower case 'o' followed by a capital 'v'. As to the derivation of the name, it has been given several times already in this thread. Kevin McE (talk) 18:58, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
So I'm biased by a mother language which does use upper case characters not only for headlines, but for Nouns (z.B. StVZO, GmbH) - see
LiDAR, It's the Corona Virus Disease, but it's not abbreviated CVD-19. --Traut (talk
) 20:45, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Comment Also, this RM is seriously disruptive. Please at least try to get some form of mass support and remember that this article has had more than 10 RM already, there is no need for this. Swordman97 talk to me 17:10, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
One RM in 36 days is not disruptive. Please suggest how one gets support if not by proposing change? And by what criteria do you consider a c3:1 majority in a large RM discussion not to be mass support.
COMMONNAME states that Wikipedia "generally prefers the name that is most commonly used ... as such names will usually best fit the five criteria listed above." In other words, COMMONNAME is useful in so far as, and only in so far as, it ensures compliance with the five WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, not in and of itself. It is clear that there are two terms which vie closely with each other in terms of recognisability, but when precision, conciseness, and consistency with the decision of the WikiProject, there can only be one outcome that fulfills our naming criteria. Kevin McE (talk) 18:58, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Supports currently outnumber opposes 68 to 24. How much more mass support do you want? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:50, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Weak Support Personally, I think 2019-2020 Coronavirus Pandemic is a preferable title, but the dispute should no doubt be centered entirely on
    WP:COMMONNAME. However, when looking at search terms, there are some initially confounding results. On one hand, COVID-19 Pandemic receives 600 million results while Coronavirus pandemic recieves 400 million. However, as per Google Trends, Coronavirus pandemic is searched much more often than COVID-19 pandemic. I presume that this means that the public name for most of the population, who look up the term, is Coronavirus pandemic, while news media and other authoritative sources, whose results populate the google search, prefer the more scientific name of COVID-19 pandemic. So essentially, this seems to be a conflict between RS and public opinion. To resolve this, WP:COMMONNAME says it "generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources)". Therefore, I would have to support changing the name as per Wikipedia policy. Zoozaz1 (talk
    ) 20:39, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as Common name does not apply here as the general term Coronavirus is a group of viruses and should not be used for the disease. COVID-19 is the proper name for this disease. Lochglasgowstrathyre (talk) 21:55, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
This article is about the pandemic, not the disease. The "coronavirus" group of viruses is what caused the pandemic, and "coronavirus" is what the pandemic is generally known as. By the way for disclosure I previously vote!d oppose under a different IP address, which is why I have not voted with this IP address. 109.158.239.84 (talk) 00:08, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
I meant that the name of the illness is COVID-19 and that was why the illness name should be used for the pandemic rather than the name of the group of which Sars-Cov-2 is part of. Lochglasgowstrathyre (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment A non-admin user attempted to close this discussion (in favour of "move") at 23:17, 2 May 2020. I undid the closing of the discussion, as I believe it is too close to be called by a non-admin, and the minimum period of seven days has not yet passed. 109.158.239.84 (talk) 23:30, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The current title is simple and easy to understand. COVID-19 is jargon. Note that, for example, the following all use "coronavirus":
  1. Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020
  2. Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act
  3. Families First Coronavirus Response Act
  4. White House Coronavirus Task Force
  5. Coronavirus Act 2020
And, as we've seen in the news, many people don't even know the "19" stands for 2019. — the Man in Question (in question) 23:51, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
The second of those legal documents pairs 'pandemic' with the name of the disease fifteen times,and the name of the virus once. Uses of the word 'coronavirus' that are not explicity linked to the naming of the pandemic are a red herring as far as this discussion is concerned. And if people don't know something (whether it is the derivation of the name COVID-19 or the naming conventions for pandemics, then what better place to inform them than in an encyclopaedia? Kevin McE (talk) 11:27, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment COVID-19 Pandemic should the final name and "some" oppose who keep deleting the "Support" votes are causing RM to be disruptive just like the previous ones need to stop or ANI is needed. Regice2020 (talk) 00:42, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support:
    WP:COMMONNAME has been abandoned on many articles for the sake of compromises and being inoffensive (and I don't mean inoffensive towards people, but rather inoffensive towards tastes). The 2019-2020 is awkward, it wasn't a pandemic until 2020. "Coronavirus" is rarely used, while "COVID-19" is about as common now as simply "corona" while still being precise and medically correct. This move should be made. Prinsgezinde (talk
    ) 01:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support: Even songs have already been made about COVID-19. It's as much a common name now as "the coronavirus". --Amakuha (talk) 03:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Funny you mention that video, because in the description it says "coronavirus pandemic", not COVID-19 pandemic. Vpab15 (talk) 09:28, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
No it does not. Kevin McE (talk) 11:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
First, quoting from the video description: "American televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who recently claimed that the coronavirus pandemic will be “over much sooner you think”, [...]" Second, one song being titled like this is not a particularly convincing source (a quick google search reveals plenty of results for songs including "coronavirus" in their title). 107.190.33.254 (talk) 18:36, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support nom on all 3 points. Both "Coronavirus" and "COVID-19" seem common at this point, and thus I tend to default to point 1 about naming it after the specific disease. I tend to agree with Global Cerebral Ischemia's point from April 29 about additional waves and use of the year. ECTran71 (talk) 08:02, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support The pandemic has been the result of the disease - COVID-19 and not the virus - coronavirus which causes it. It is apt to rename the article. We can also look at the past outbreaks, years are rarely mentioned in the titles, the name of the disease suffices. Shawnqual (talk) 10:13, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose for now. They may be a second outbreak. Ythlev (talk) 13:52, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
As mentioned above, any subsequent waves of infection would be considered part of the same ongoing pandemic (which could last for over a year or more), and thus be included in the same article. The pandemic will not end until either an effective vaccine is developed or herd immunity is reached. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose in order to better inform the public. Google Search Trends indicate that "Coronavirus" is searched for more than "COVID-19" by a factor of 10 [1]. Yes, COVID-19 is the scientific name, but our job, fundamentally, is to ensure that the average person who wants to get information can easily access it on a free encyclopedia. The google data indicates that we will connect a factor of 10x more people to quality information if we use "coronavirus" rather than "COVID-19". Nmurali02 (talk) 14:15, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
You're comparing apples to oranges. The issue is the search results for "coronavirus pandemic" vs "COVID-19 pandemic." The latter shows over 20 million more results for me on google search. And obviously, the former comparison is invalid because the word "coronavirus" encompasses all coronaviruses (including SARS, MERS, and those that cause the common cold) and has existed longer than the word "COVID-19." Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
If we're comparing "coronavirus pandemic" to "COVID-19 pandemic", the former still wins on Google Trends by a factor of at least 4:1. 109.158.239.84 (talk) 16:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Our naming policy is based on what appears in
reliable sources, not people's search box entries. Kevin McE (talk
) 16:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Don't worry, this isn't a problem. Nobody (not even uninformed people not knowing the term COVID-19) will miss the article, as we will, of course, leave redirects in place catching all possible title variants and leading to the technically correct title. It is, however, highly desirable for an encyclopedia to use proper nomenclature in its headline. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:30, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Coronavirus covers a large range of diseases.
    chat with me
    ) 14:35, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose COVID-19 doesn't sound as good as coronavirus, we have already changed the name of this article two times, first 2019-20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, then to 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic and now 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic so why do we need to change it again? Couldn't we spend our time improving exiting and creating new articles rather than spending our time discussing a name change? Frontier Place (talk) 16:19, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • "It just doesn't sound as good" is hardly an argument, nor is "we've already moved it". The only reason we moved it IS TO BE MORE ACCURATE: the first time was because it was no longer just in Wuhan, and the second was because it was no longer just an outbreak but a pandemic. The current title was the result of an awkward consensus only formed because there wasn't a real official name yet. If we keep it at the current title but the pandemic continues, we'd have to move the page every single year. The proposed title is a good stable title we could land on so we can stop the seemingly-constant move requests (which aren't that constant). If you don't care about "spending our time discussing a name change", then you don't have to participate. And, improving existing articles and deciding on the best title for people to find them don't have to be mutually exclusive. Paintspot Infez (talk) 00:10, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm married to a doctor. "COVID-19" is the diagnose of her patients, but "corona" is what's hit our city. I don't buy any reasoning deeming this natural, pragmatic and context-sensitive use of language "incorrect".
To those saying that it's illogical to name a pandemic after a group of viruses, well, the disease is itself named from the group of viruses, so we will have that anyway. We can choose between having "coronavirus" in a technical, abstruse acronym or spelling it out.
Is "coronavirus" too unspecific? Sometimes, but definitely not in the context of "2019-20 coronavirus pandemic". Thats quite enough of specificity, if you ask me.
– St.nerol (talk) 16:59, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

RM sidebar (comments, extended discussion)

We will need to move (rename) other articles for consistency

Clear
WP:SNOW support for renaming other articles for consistency if the RM above passes. Otherwise, this sidebar is moot. (non-admin closure) {{u|Sdkb}} talk
23:10, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

If we decide to make the move (rename the article), we should do the same for all the other articles that have "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic" in their titles.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 23:18, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Survey

*oppose this name works fine the way it is. Starzoner (talk) 21:25, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

  • @Starzoner: We are speaking of a possibility where we do accept the name. Reread Markworthen’s comment. sam1370 (talk) 23:14, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support for consistency, if this happens. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 01:26, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support In discussing epidemics in general, it seems we usually refer to them by the name of the disease rather than the pathogen. TornadoLGS (talk) 04:17, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Neutral per all reasons by users. Whether it will move the name of the article or not, I have to play safe to vote neutral and the majority votes will be the result.
    talk
    ) 13:45, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support this would keep the articles consistent (if this gets renamed) and more concise. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 19:41, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per consistency on the articles. QueerFilmNerdtalk 22:47, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose current title is more specific and conciseYeungkahchun (talk) 23:37, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
I would have to question what you understand by the words "specific" and "concise". The proposal is shorter, and identifies a particular disease rather than a group of viruses. You also appear to have put your comment in the wrong section. Kevin McE (talk) 08:00, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Extended content (some discussion and a bunch of misplaced !votes)

@Yeungkahchun: you may want to move your !vote to the section above if you were !voting on the RM itself. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:14, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

  • Oppose simple enough name. Starzoner (talk) 22:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Have these other pages been tagged? Was a notification of this sub thread discussion placed on their talk pages? If not, this is a process failure. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:03, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
    A link to this move request
    WP:LOCALCONSENSUS). {{u|Sdkb}} talk
    02:34, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Just for the record, my intention was to highlight one of the likely implications of the RM, if moving was the ultimate decision. I put it in a "sidebar" because I did not want to muddy the waters with extended commentary within the section devoted to "voting" on the requested move. I had no idea editors would treat my comment as a (secondary?) RM!   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 14:34, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support for consistency between the articles. Tomatoexpress (talk) 00:28, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. Flix11 (talk) 07:03, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • @Flix11: Wait, was this Support vote meant for the original Requested move on whether to move the main page, or the finished near-unanimous discussion on whether we'd move the subpages as well? If it's the first one, you might want to move your vote to the subsection above so your vote is in the correct place. Paintspot Infez (talk) 20:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
@Flix11: I was just asking because it was unclear which section you meant to put this in. If it's the former, you might want to fix this / move this to the correct section so your vote is accounted for. Paintspot Infez (talk) 00:13, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Pandemics are named after the disease, not the virus

Someone else (I can't remember who at the moment), educated me when he/she/they wrote, "Pandemics are named after the disease, not the virus." So, for example, if we followed the tradition of the present article, naming the pandemic after the virus, we would have an article titled something like, "2019 United States outbreak of measles morbillivirus wild-type D8 and B3", instead of the current title, "Measles resurgence in the United States".

Some references

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "Measles (Rubeola) > Measles Cases and Outbreaks > Measles Cases in 2019." ("All measles cases were caused by measles wild-type D8 or B3.")

Organisation Mondiale de la Santé. "Mise à jour de la nomenclature relative à la description des caractéristiques génétiques des virus rougeoleux sauvages: nouveaux génotypes et souches de référence." Relevé épidémiologique hebdomadaire 78, non. 1 (2003): 229–240.

Paules, Catharine I., Hilary D. Marston, and Anthony S. Fauci. “Measles in 2019 — Going Backward.” New England Journal of Medicine 380 (6 June 2019): 2185–2187. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1905099

World Health Organization (WHO). "Update of the nomenclature for describing the genetic characteristics of wild-type measles viruses: new genotypes and reference strains." Weekly epidemiological record 78, no. 29 (2003): 229–240. https://www.who.int/wer/2003/en/wer7827.pdf

  - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 00:43, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

  • See
    WP:COMMONNAME. Unlike the measles example above, this disease has a short and snappy name that’s getting widespread usage. Therefore, I don’t think the virus is the one common name that we can use, and we have to base the title off other areas of the article naming policy. Benica11 (talk
    ) 03:22, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you Benica11, that is a reasonable argument. :0)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 11:08, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Nvm my mistake I assumed that the cases included suspected ones Username900122 (talk) 16:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

@Username900122:, would you like to move this comment to wherever it was meant to be: it clearly does not belong here. And although it is not normally good form to remove another editor's talk page comments, I would suggest you delete this comment of mine when yo do so. Kevin McE (talk) 15:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Agree. Viruses tend to have technical names, and the disease is what non virologists usually talk about. Smallpox is eradicated. Smallpox is the disease. The virus, "Variola virus", still exists, in secure labs. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:45, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Are we have to do an another RM yet over again?

How many of RMs is required to satisfy the requirement for an name? --91.207.170.201 (talk) 08:21, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

one Kevin McE (talk) 13:42, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Would be see that one as final. --91.207.170.201 (talk) 19:07, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes. Instead, I think it should be moved to 2019-2020 coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic because i either of them are used.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should we include a section on the Sweden policy controversy?

It seems relevant to the Europe section and to the article as a whole.Php2000 (talk) 11:53, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

we're trying to shorten the article, not make it longer, though all topics are important--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:04, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Belongs in the article on the country IMO. Different people read the data different ways is likely the most one can say. Sweden (328) has more deaths per capita than comparitors like Denmark (91), Norway (42), or Finland (50). But not as many as say Spain, Italy and France. Belgium counts more aggressively than others so really cannot be compared to anyone (Belgium is taking into account all deaths not just deaths with a positive PCR diagnosis).
  • Than on the economics side of things, it is unclear if Sweden is doing any better.[18] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:14, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Given Sweden's different approach regarding this issue, I think that it is of public interest to compare the results. Also, our local experts estimated that we would have had 40% unemployment if we had gone ahead with as severe lockdowns as many other countries. We will still get 14% unemployment according to the latest estimates, but it is still far less bad than the alternative. David A (talk) 14:09, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Per "We will still get 14% unemployment" so the same as the United States? Norway is at 15% Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Sweden's deaths plateaued. It will help calculating the worldwide impact of the mitigation. Iluvalar (talk) 15:57, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Discussions about Sweden's policy has featured heavily in news from other states - I was surprised not see it in the article already. It's definitely relevant. Hentheden (talk) 23:11, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Here we have "daily confirmed COVID19 deaths per million people"[19] Sweden is third globally after the UK and Ecuador. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:58, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
  • This one gives total deaths per million, which I find more useful [20]. It puts Sweden down a notch. I wonder if Sweden is doing the same as the UK; including all deaths where COVID is mentioned on the death cert, even if the cause of death is something else? Here in the UK we've got the questionable policy (according to something doing the rounds on social media) that if someone got run over by a bus and then a post mortem found COVID infection, they'd be listed as a COVID death. Arcturus (talk) 12:07, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
A big fan of Our World In Data as well and it shows Sweden is higher than all the countries around it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:25, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, as their decision not to lockdown received news, criticism, and now, a high death toll. Definitely worth including imo. QueerFilmNerdtalk 00:16, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Sweden's position is (almost) unique in the West and the MSM give it a great deal of attention. There should be a section about it in the article. Arcturus (talk) 19:15, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Many should oppose to adding more sections, because the page starting have some delay on loading the content even with a "high performance" computer or internet. It should be placed somewhere else related to COVID-19 pandmeic. Regice2020 (talk) 07:34, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems like there is a consensus for adding this section so far. David A (talk) 06:36, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I think there is. Arcturus (talk) 19:15, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Are some skilled editors willing to start working on such a section then? As I mentioned earlier, I think that the complete lockdowns that much of the rest of the world are doing seem unrealistic, as the disease will automatically start to spread just as much as in Sweden as soon as the countries open up again, and then they will have economic depression, massive unemployment numbers, and likely starvation on top of the pandemic to deal with. David A (talk) 08:04, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

United States section

The U.S. section seems to have become quite bloated. Does anyone else feel that it needs to be trimmed? Gandydancer (talk) 13:37, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I trimmed a tiny few of the lowest-hanging fruits / least vital details, and condensed the wording in some other places, but there is probably more to be done, especially considering that the section will need to be expanded with new events. -sche (talk) 17:02, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
needs to be trimmed--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I have done more trimming and believe that more will need to be done. As we move forward with the U.S. now beginning to reopen many places we will need to make room for that new information as well. Gandydancer (talk) 14:56, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Oh brother. Just finished doing my feeble, unprofessional best and the section is immediately tagged and I'm given unasked for advise. grrr Gandydancer (talk) 02:08, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

growing consensus about relative safety of being outdoors

It seems that there is an expert consensus that likelihood of infection is far greater indoors than outdoors, with 1 in 7,300 cases the result of outdoor exposure in a recent Chinese study.[2] Interested in suggestions from experienced editors as to where this information would be best placed (i.e., under Transmission, Prevention, etc.). Thanks! Tambourine60 (talk) 16:19, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Being indoors with a crowd versus being outdoors alone, for sure the outdoors alone is best. Being outdoors in a crowd could be a concern still though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:14, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I checked the source material. They analysed the location of each outbreak, not the location where infection took place. And the data was gathered mostly in January (winter). Not possible to generalise from this. Robertpedley (talk) 20:07, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Southern hemisphere pedant on patrol - January is only winter in the non-tropical northern hemisphere. Quite a few of us live elsewhere. HiLo48 (talk) 22:31, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Coronavirus,COVID-19
  2. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2020-05-17.
The consensus of the Chinese, or you mean the position of the CCP? This is silly. We dont do medical consensus from a NYT article, read
WP:MEDRS. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk
) 05:14, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Attribution for Trump image in misinformation page

Trump turned to William Bryan and asked "is there a way we can do something like that" and ended with "So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with." [21]. He did not straight suggested to the general public to inject bleach. The misinformation happened, through the media, a funny Lysol advertisement and political BS. That's why I agreed to put this picture in the misinformation chapter. I deleted the image until we find a caption which does not spread the misinformation itself without attribution. Iluvalar (talk) 15:32, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

I restored the video per the earlier consensus: reliable sources cover it as Trump suggesting it, so any of our personal feelings about whether or not he suggested it are
WP:OR, AFAICT. -sche (talk
) 17:25, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
The use of the word "might" in the caption satisfactorily addresses this, in my view. I'm open to discussion about making some tweaks if others disagree, but we'll need to keep it concise without taking out the information that's there presently. I added a hidden text warning to the video not to modify it without discussing at talk, since otherwise it's going to keep getting removed. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:06, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Surely reliable sources stating that Trump suggested injecting bleach when he didn't is enough to make them no longer reliable sources? 82.17.189.66 (talk) 12:20, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Iluvalar. It is also completely irrelevant information inserted into an information page about an extremely serious topic just to take the opportunity to score some cheap partisan political points, instead of focusing on genuinely informing the public at large about verifiable data. David A (talk) 17:57, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
You are making a different point than Iluvalar; be careful not to speak for others. Re your point, you had an opportunity to air your concerns at
time to move on. {{u|Sdkb}} talk
18:06, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
@Sdkb, I tried to modify first and have been reverted, I will try this path again and see. But it can't stay like this, this is EXACTLY the misinformation I want to illustrate.
@-sche, yes read again that "consensus" because I was part of it. As well as Doc james asking for a better caption. I don't think you delivered on that front. I'll try an edit again soon. Iluvalar (talk) 21:36, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
As per what sdkb says, the caption is sufficient with its usage of 'might' to fit
WP:NPOV. Can you suggest another caption so that we know what your contention with this one is? Acalycine (talk
) 21:32, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Well I tried something. I wish I knew what those 2 talked before the press conference. Iluvalar (talk) 23:53, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Trump suggested more researches. He said "So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with." . Let's be clear, the research he suggested out of context, sounds stupid. There might be a context or it might just have been stupid. Either way he asked for more researches. No one listening to that press conference would have go out to buy syringe at the drug store to cure his cold symptoms. Our caption should be clear about that. As it is today, this is the misinformation I wanted to illustrate. We could put a box around and label it "misinformation" that would work too. Iluvalar (talk) 02:34, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
At one point he raises it just as a research suggestion, but then toward the end of the clip, he states more directly that injections work to get rid of the virus. The clip/caption is fine; let's just leave it be and address some of the areas of the article that need it rather than getting sucked into the political wormhole. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:45, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Oh, I'm contributing in Wikipedia to get stuck in political wormhole. I'm here to prevent POV pushes and this is one. I'm Canadian, I have little interest in this political thing. For the time being, I removed the image again. We could also neutralize the caption by giving 3 different point of view, but that route would just make the caption of the image too big to be useful. Please discuss about the caption problem before adding again a non-neutral statement. Iluvalar (talk) 15:38, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Iluvalar's removal and I oppose restoring it. IMO this picture, with or without caption, has no place in this article, which is about the general, worldwide pandemic. Consider adding it to the article about misinformation, and possibly COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. But not here. This article should have a global view rather than a US-centric one. -- MelanieN (talk) 15:52, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

There does not seem to be a consensus for keeping the image description text as it is then. David A (talk) 08:05, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
So is somebody willing to either remove the image or turn the text less slanted? David A (talk) 19:53, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Misinformation image: Trump or Khamenei?

ultraviolet light might help treat COVID-19. There is no evidence that either could be a viable method.[2]

This picture has been removed, with the following edit summary: "We don't have room for a second visual here, and there have been repeated objections to the one just added". What is your opinion? -- Tobby72 (talk) 13:49, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Iran Leader Refuses US Help, Citing Virus Conspiracy Theory". VOA News. 26 March 2020.
  2. ^ "Donald Trump says he was being sarcastic when he suggested injecting disinfectant could treat coronavirus". ABC News. 25 April 2020.
@Tobby72: I removed the photo per the consensus from here. The Trump photo has consensus per this discussion, although there have been a few waves above about the caption. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:48, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Not with that caption. David A, Doc james and myself explicitly asked for a better caption in that exact dicussion. Iluvalar (talk) 20:51, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
They asked for a better caption than the one used for the clip at the misinformation article, and this is the one we wrote and agreed upon. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:52, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I asked for a better caption, you proposed something at 3:00 AM and at 7:00AM it was already in the article with David A who still managed to had time to disagree. I'm sorry but you can't call that a consensus. Iluvalar (talk) 01:23, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Neither image/video should be included. I'd recommend moving the Trump video to the misinformation topic. We've seen plenty of misinformation from the leaders of the United States, China, Iran, Brazil, Russia, and others. I don't think it's worth singling out Trump here. - Wikmoz (talk) 05:27, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree that singling out Trump, when there are far more extreme world leaders that have said far more extreme and deliberately untrue things about this pandemic, is partisan and unprofessional for an encyclopaedia. David A (talk) 08:11, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
David, why are you bringing the metric of "extremity of statement" into this discussion? We're talking about notability and notoriety here, I'm not sure why you're bringing politics into it. Trump's gaffe is the most well-known one, at this point in time. Do you have any better suggestions, friend? Acalycine (talk) 06:01, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Because I still think that trying to make specific politicians look silly is inappropriate for a supposed to be matter-of-fact information page, and that if people in general want to obsess over how awful said specific politicians are, there are objectively far worse examples in the world than Trump. Yet almost all media seems strangely obsessed with him. David A (talk) 18:57, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Anyway, is somebody willing to either remove the image or adjust the caption to turn less slanted? David A (talk) 07:16, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

)

SPLIT IT UP

This is getting too long! We need to split this into a few more pages

School closures -- current info

Currently, the last paragraph of the lead has a sentence that states "Schools, universities, and colleges have closed either on a nationwide or local basis in 186 countries, affecting approximately 98.5 percent of the world's student population". This is false, because a few countries have opened now and the number of countries closed has dropped from 194 to this value over the last few weeks. I'd like to get consensus on what to do about this. Should we make it past tense "At the pandemic's height, schools, universities, and colleges were closed... in 194 countries, affecting approximately 98.5 percent of the world's student population", make it current "Schools, universities, and colleges are closed...currently affecting", or do something else? sam1370 (talk / contribs) 06:04, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Hum yes how best to word this. It is unclear if we are at the height of the pandemic yet and schools may close again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:12, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
@Doc James: I think we should at least change it to make the wording current, so as not to cause misinformation. I will do so. sam1370 (talk / contribs) 21:40, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I would also like the current wording changed to reflect the fact that in many countries, while students weren't physically attending school, they were participating in remote learning. Teachers were working very hard, as were most students. Simply describing the schools as being closed is misleading. HiLo48 (talk) 22:27, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Per
WP:RECENTISM concerns, I think the most appropriate thing for the lead would be use the statistic at the pandemic's height, but I share Doc James' concern that we don't really know for sure where we are on the curve. Since this article is supposed to be in the past tense, what about just changing "have closed" to "closed"? {{u|Sdkb}} talk
23:55, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Per
WP:RECENTISM), there should be no hesitation in changing "X has happened" to "X happened at time T" in most cases. While the assumption that this article will remain unedited for 5 years is unrealistic, there's no need to make this article newsy except in places where it's really unavoidable (if there are any such places in the text); those can usually be {{as of}}'d. Schools were mostly closed in March/April/May AFAIR, depending on the country (needs checking). Boud (talk
) 03:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
How about "Schools, universities, and colleges have closed either on a nationwide or local basis, at one point in time, in 186 countries, affecting approximately 98.5 percent of the world's student population"? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:07, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
That seems fine to me. David A (talk) 12:55, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Still doesn't address the simple fact that thousands of schools are still operating, albeit online. They are not closed. HiLo48 (talk) 17:35, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
User:HiLo48 we can add "physically closed" if you want. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:55, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
"Closed to in-person learning"? or something similar? And then mention that most are doing some form of remote learning. QueerFilmNerdtalk 17:57, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
The learning is still in-person. It just avoids gathering students in the one physical classroom. HiLo48 (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
What has really happened is that, rather than schools being closed (a perspective of those who see them as child minding centres?), physical classrooms have been replaced with interactive online classrooms. This is not as radical as it seems. My country, Australia, has been doing it for decades with the School of the Air. HiLo48 (talk) 18:14, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Closed or moved instruction online would be fine with me. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:41, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't know what proportion are totally shut down, compared with the proportion operating an online environment. It would good to have some facts before emphasising one situation over another. "Shut down" strikes me as tabloid language. It's how the tabloids here in Australia have described the situation, and it's wrong. (Those tabloids are all Rupert Murdoch's.) HiLo48 (talk) 23:46, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
I am happy with "physically close" or "closed to in person learning". Lots would not have moved online. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:37, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

The see also links

The see also links at the bottom of the article are definitely not the best ones we could have. Can we try to come up with some better ones, keeping in the mind the guidelines at

MOS:SEEALSO? {{u|Sdkb}} talk
00:46, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I'd suggest maybe just...
Coronavirus disease 2019
COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory
Pandemics
Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic
All are linked within the topic but I suspect when the reader hits the end, these topics may be the most relevant for continued reading. - Wikmoz (talk) 01:56, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
@Wikmoz: Sounds good to me. I'm going to remove most of the ones there and replace with those. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:56, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I would say none of them. One is not supposed to repeat links in the text in a see also section. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:27, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
At least one of the links,
coronavirus disease 2019 just feels wrong, and not what readers would expect from the section, so I'm IAR-ing a bit. {{u|Sdkb}} talk
09:49, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Okay left the link to the disease and trimmed a number of others. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:28, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Clump of references

There's a big clump of references at the start of the reference section identified only by their number, but that appear properly when you hover the cursor over them. It appeared a few days ago, I think. Does anyone know what caused this and how to fix it? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:05, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Was discussed as a work around for two columns.[22]
Appears someone broke what was there before so replaced it.[23] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:08, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Found the issue. It is AutoEd in this edit by User:Ozzie10aaaa which I am sure they did not realize.[24] Ozzie the tool changed "</references> to <references />" which breaks it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:25, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

sorry it was my fault (wont use it again)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:45, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Archiving working?

It looks like the archiving function may have broken again? Not fully sure, but nothing's been moved since the 17th. If there's any way to get the archive bot running more frequently so that discussions go away as soon as they hit the 36h mark, rather than waiting for the next daily run or whatnot, we should do that. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:29, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I assume manual archiving is not an option? I mean, I just tried it with one discussion and I see no issue with it. It's not ideal but if we must... Unless it messes with the bot? RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 03:42, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
@RandomCanadian: Manual archiving is always available, but it's a band-aid fix over a bleeding wound if there's something wrong with the automatic archiving, which a talk page as active as this depends on. I'm not 100% sure there is a problem, though, but it'll become very clear very soon if there is. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:53, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Okay, there's definitely a failure happening here. Lowercase sigmabot just tried this mostly null edit, with summary Archive failure: ceterach.exceptions.EditError: 'spamblacklist': CeterachError('Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia\'s blacklist. * \'\'\'To save your changes now\'\'\', you must go back and \'\'remove the blocked link\'\' (shown below), and then save. **Note that if you used a redirection link or URL shortener (like e.g. \'\'\'goo.gl\'\'\', \'\'\'t.co\'\'\', \'\'\'youtu.be\'\'\', \'\.... Pinging Σ, any idea what's going on? Also pinging Tenryuu, in case this is also what's affecting the Teahouse. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 09:41, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
It means that of the threads that are eligible for archiving, one of them contains a blacklisted external link. Edits containing such links cannot be saved. This begs the question: how did it get saved on this page in the first place? The answer to that is because it was added to the blacklist after being added here. This edit should allow it through on the next bot run. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:21, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
As to the Teahouse thing - it can't be the same kind of issue because Nick Moyes (talk · contribs) was permitted to make this edit. If it had contained blacklisted URLs, no save would have been possible - not even for an admin. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:10, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
So, apologies, I was the source of the "problem" (but not for the reasons we thought). Lesson next time I report a link for the blacklist: remove it too... @JzG: suggested "we can move it to an edit filter if anyone feels strongly about it"; but obviously this problem here appears to have been solved. I manually archived the offending thread to make sure it poses no further problems (not that it should). Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 13:59, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Redrose64, hold on a minute. Does the bot check only the content it archives and not the whole page? Let's say there was a section made on May 14 with a blacklisted external link. Would all sections after that one be prevented from being archived as the bot would constantly scan all sections that meet archiving criteria and refuse to archive any of them because it constantly catches the blacklisted link? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:36, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
The bot doesn't check anything, the check is done by the MediaWiki parser. The bot selects threads that are eligible for archiving, opens both pages for editing, copies those threads from the source, pastes them into the destination, then sends a "save" request for the destination (just like clicking Publish changes). At that point the MediaWiki software checks to see if it's a valid edit; amongst these checks is the spam blacklist; and if a check fails, the save is rejected with an error message. The bot, upon receipt of the error message, abandons the rest of the process - otherwise, it cuts the archived threads from the source page and saves that.
You can see the error message for yourself by taking the URL that I modified here, pasting it into an edit window, prefixing it with https:// and going for Publish changes; essentially it's this one plus this one with the $1 replaced by whatreallymakesyouill.com, all prefixed with "Error:" and enclosed in a pink box. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:28, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Looks like the bot did a proper run earlier, so hopefully all is good now. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 09:58, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Resolved
    I also just noticed that the bot archived 40 discussions at the U.S. page, some of which were quite old, so something was clearly broken that's now been fixed. Σ, whatever you or someone else did to fix what was happening, thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:47, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Mention of misinformation in the lead

At the moment there is a statement in the lead describing how social media has spread misinformation about the virus. I amended this to include mention of the mainstream media, which is IMHO equally to blame. Here's a classic example from The Telegraph [25]. The source backs up the assertion that the MSM are culpable. Mention of the MSM, or other news outlets has now been removed, but I'm not sure why. I propose to reinstate mention of the MSM regarding the spread of misinformation. Any thoughts? Thanks. Arcturus (talk) 14:26, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

@Arcturus: I was the one who reverted, here (apologies I wasn't able to find your initial edit to give you a revert notification). My summary was Most misinformation has been spread online, and I don't think we have room to start listing every last way it's propagated. To expand a bit on that, I don't dispute at all that the mass media has been involved in spreading misinformation, but a lot of mass media is consumed online nowadays anyways. That said, I'm open to trying to find a better way to phrase things if you want to discuss a bit here. The main challenge is that we need to keep things really concise to avoid bloating the lead, so I don't think we'd have room to list out each of text messaging, social media, mass media, etc. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:42, 21 May 2020 (UTC.
@Sdkb: No need to apologise, and thanks for replying. I agree, we do need to keep it concise, especially in an article such as this. Let me give it some thought and I'll come back here. Likewise, if you have an idea for a concise sentence that covers it, please suggest it. Thanks, Arcturus (talk) 11:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Let us discuss better maps! Actual ones, for example.

First of all, I must confess that I do not know how to make maps and upload them to Wikipedia. So, if someone likes my suggestions, feel free to make them real! I love the (hidden) map of dead per million inhabitants, even with numbers, wow! Death count is much more significant than count of "confirmed cases", because of different testing strategies. But in the mentioned map, these are cumulative numbers! I suggest to build a map with actual death numbers, 7 days incidence is the best, because of weekend effects. --88.68.50.0 (talk) 22:46, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Another idea is the weekly rise of total confirmed cases: To compare confirmed cases rates in different countries, is nonsense, but it is wise to compare the new numbers per week with the previously found, supposed that the country does not change its testing strategy radically. This way one can see, how well a country managed to stop the rise and control the pandemic. --88.68.50.0 (talk) 22:46, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I feel like maps are a bit over rated. What about a 3-D globe? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.142.114.150 (talk) 23:43, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts! We recently had a long discussion about whether or not to switch to deaths rather than cases as the primary map, but it ended in no consensus (was just formally closed by an admin in the archive the other day). Regarding the weekly rise, I'd need to see an example of it to parse specifically what you mean, but we already have a bunch of charts in the cases/deaths sections, so discussion about a new one would need to be in the context of how it fits in with or replaces some of the current ones. Regarding a 3D globe, I'd be a somewhat wary, since it might make it harder to see the entire world at one time without having to click anything. It's an interesting thought, though. You might be interested in a broader discussion we're having about standardizing COVID-19 maps over here at the COVID-19 WikiProject. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Countries have very different strategies for counting deaths aswell. So no deaths is not really any better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:43, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

The article is way too big

I think the following sections should be merged:

  • The "National responses" subsections into a single "National responses" section
  • The "International responses" subsections into a single "International responses" section
  • The "Impact" subsections into a single "Impact" section

--RaphaelQS (talk) 08:52, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree that some parts of the international responses section are too long, although I think some subsectioning is still needed. I added {{Very long section}} tags in two spots, though. I disagree about the national responses and impact sections; those are important topics that need to be covered here and have been heavily edited to be as concise as possible. Perhaps there could be a little more shift from covering individual countries to covering continents, but that'll need to be done carefully. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 09:57, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
A few sections could be shortened but this is a fairly major topic so we expect it to be fairly big. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:44, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

CDC fatality rate estimates released

The CDC recently released their estimates of fatality rates for COVID-19 (finally!), but I was surprised to see these weren't listed in the article. I've added a sentence in the Deaths section regarding the column with their "current best estimates." The CDC estimates that the overall fatality rate among symptomatic cases is 0.4% and that an additional 35% of individuals are asymptomatic, giving an overall IFR of 0.26% (which nicely matches Oxford's CEBM estimate for an IFR of 0.1%-0.4%). This is being reported by major news outlets e.g. here and here. I mention it in the Talk because I know this is a sensitive issue for many editors, and I want to acknowledge that and preemptively make the case for why this information should be included. CDC is obviously

WP:MEDRS. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk
) 14:04, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes this ! Great source, let's use that . Symptomatic IFR : 0.4% (0.2%-1%) and 35% asymptomatic. @Doc James and RexxS:. Iluvalar (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
EDIT- FWIW, the best estimate varies dramatically according to age from as low as 0.05% in those under 49 to as high as 1.3% in those over 65. Maybe we should mention how the range differs by age? Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 18:04, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
The source says "Are estimates intended to support public health preparedness and planning. Are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19."[26] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:01, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Well, they can't make "predictions" because they don't have a crystal ball, so what else could any published estimates be used for except for public health preparedness and planning since we're still in the middle of the pandemic? Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 18:04, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Great find! Thanks a lot. Making this knowledge go public should help spread more proportionate responses to the pandemic across the world. David A (talk) 17:41, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

The German intelligence information about Xi Jinping ordering the WHO to withhold information

Should we add a section about that the Chinese Dictator

Tedros Adhanom
to "delay a global warning" about the threat of COVID-19 during a conversation via a personal phone call on January 21 this year?

The German newspaper

Bundesnachrichtendienst
.

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-krise-bundesregierung-zweifelt-an-us-these-zur-entstehung-des-coronavirus-a-51add7cf-96b6-4d04-a2d0-71ce27cff69c

https://indianexpress.com/article/world/coronavirus-who-china-xi-jinping-tedros-adhanom-phone-call-6402951/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8304471/Chinas-president-Xi-Jinping-personally-requested-delay-COVID-19-pandemic-warning.html

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1187877.shtml

David A (talk) 06:49, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

The

C.I.A.
seems to agree with the German intelligence information:

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-cia-believes-china-tried-stop-who-alarm-pandemic-1503565

https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2020/05/13/covid-19-after-german-intelligence-now-cia-believes-china-tried-to-coerce-who.html

David A (talk) 07:04, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

No. Especially since it seems that the WHO has immediately said it's untrue. HiLo48 (talk) 07:23, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Xi and Tedros spoke by phone on January 21 during which the Chinese President “urged” the WHO chief to “hold back information about a human-to-human transmission and to delay a pandemic warning.” - this does not make any sense, since human-to-human transmission was already declared on the 20th...It is also contradictory and thus slightly amusing to claim Tedros was pressured to delay a global warning" about the threat of COVID-19 when the WHO had clearly published a multitude of warnings by this time, including technical guidance about virus detection to UN states (on the 10th I believe). Acalycine (talk) 07:42, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Well, I do not think that we know exactly what kind of information about COVID-19 that the Bundesnachrichtendienst and C.I.A. say that they have evidence for that Xi asked Tedros to withhold. David A (talk) 10:02, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Okay, but the foundational claim that Xi and Tedros had a phone call on that day has been refuted, and is even more unlikely given that h-2-h was declared the day before (according to this timeline). What additional information about h-2-h (other than it being sustained and thus meeting WHO's criteria) would even exist? Acalycine (talk) 10:38, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
We do not use the daily mail for anything. We need very high quality sources as the popular press seems all to prone to spreading questionable information. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:31, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
The Daily Mail isn't the original source. It seems to be Der Spiegel and Newsweek, which I think are reliable newspapers.
Anyway, I am not certain exactly what kind of information about COVID-19 that Xi Jinping supposedly told Tedros to withhold, but I hope that we will get more elaborate official information releases from both of the intelligence services soon. David A (talk) 13:27, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
The more I think about this the stranger it seems. It's simply not the practice of security agencies to go public with material like this. Their primary role is surrounded with secrecy. They don't play politics. HiLo48 (talk) 23:30, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
It likely depends on whether or not they think that public knowledge about a massive threat would be better or worse for national security. David A (talk) 13:05, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps think about who would like to frame China as a 'massive threat' in those countries, and who administers these intelligence agencies, and then you may have some well-founded skepticism of these matters. ;) Acalycine (talk) 13:42, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
The Chinese Communist party has several hundred nightmarish concentration camps in which it imprisons anybody who sufficiently disagrees with their worldview, along with an Orwellian social credit system to discover them. It is not the kind of subject matter that you should make spiteful smileys about, nor the kind of regime that you should put your trust in. David A (talk) 22:10, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Good luck with that, man. Acalycine (talk) 05:51, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
My apologies if I was being rude. I just don't think that real life imperialistic extreme Orwellian tyranny is anything to joke about. David A (talk) 08:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Disagree, there is contradictory information given WHO announced human-to-human transmission on January 20th, so it makes no sense for Xi to demand WHO to withhold H2H information on January 21st. The timeline is flipped and doesn't make any sense. There is a lot of questionable misinformation floating around that contradicts itself, we should now be promoting misinformation on Wikipedia.Rwat128 (talk) 16:00, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
People do that because politicians in all countries are cynically taking advantage of this virus to convince their citizens they are doing a wonderful job of protecting them from something evil and foreign. Right now, nothing in the news cycle should be taken on face value. Of course, if you totally trust all the politicians in your own country.... HiLo48 (talk) 22:55, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Thats exactly why wikipedia uses
Horse Eye Jack (talk
) 23:20, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I would appreciate further input here. David A (talk) 19:51, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems like we are leaning towards including a section about this so far. David A (talk) 07:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
All we have are a few popular press peices. Not convinced it belongs here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:12, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Popular press is just fine as a source. Der Spiegel is a top shelf source and the other lower quality press such as newsweek following it makes it DUE. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:55, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Spiegel says[27] "According to the Federal Intelligence Service BND, China has urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to delay a global warning after the outbreak of the virus at the highest level. On January 21, China's head of state Xi Jinping during a phone call with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked to withhold information about a person-to-person transmission and to postpone a pandemic warning."

NYPost says[28] "“Dr. Tedros and President Xi did not speak on January 21 and they have never spoken by phone. Such inaccurate reports distract and detract from WHO’s and the world’s efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement read. The WHO continued to say China confirmed human-to-human transmission to the UN health agency on Jan. 20 and the WHO “publicly declared” two days later that “data collected … suggests that human-to-human transmission is taking place in Wuhan.”"

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:19, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Here we have a piece published Jan 21st 2020 talking about person-to-person transmission in China which was on CCTV.[29]
That it being called a pandemic was delayed to March 11th, yes that should have happened sooner. But calling it a pandemic is not based on China, but on WHO making the call in other regions of the world. A pandemic requires multiple continents to be involved. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:24, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
There are a couple of things worth noting:
  1. The BND has not made any official statement about China supposedly pressuring the WHO. Where Der Spiegel got this accusation from is unclear, and the BND has refused to comment on it to other news agencies. The accusation does not make much sense, since China confirmed human-to-human transmission on 20 January.
  2. The word "pandemic" does not have much actual significance, and the WHO using the term does not trigger any major shift in policy. The important phrase is "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" (PHEIC). A formal declaration of a PHEIC does have real legal consequences. The WHO was annoyed by journalists constantly asking about the word "pandemic": [30].
-Thucydides411 (talk) 21:42, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Do not include yet, and if ends up being included, do not present as fact. There is a risk of misinformation (could be at Der Spiegel, could be at the German intelligence service for all we know) at this time and media reporting will be biased towards more controversy. Wikipedia should avoid putting in something this big if it's controversial and potentially can be misinformation. We wouldn't want this to be in the article and then in February 2021 when everything's cooled down Der Spiegel publishes a retraction piece after they found out that their intel source wasn't truthful. Juxlos (talk) 12:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Do not include. The very most basic allegations in the article are contradicted by well known facts published by numerous newspapers around the world. Furthermore the allegations are based upon secret evidence that none of us have access to. It would be pretty irresponsible to give this credence. -Darouet (talk) 17:00, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Include the information - that information being the BND accusation and China/the WHO's denial. It is well sourced and has been covered by a myriad of highly circulated sources: Der Spiegel (found reliable by the community at

WP:RS/P), NZ Herald (the most circulated newspaper in New Zealand), and the WHO itself. We shouldn't present the BND/CIA intel as certain, factual, nor definitive, but we should cover that they made the claim and that the WHO/China refuted it. Us doing that does not give the claim "credence", it merely ensures that we present a well sourced dispute to our readers in an article it holds relevance to. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans
// 19:35, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Include the information - Same arguments as

talk
) 20:18, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

At the moment, I do not see a consensus in either direction (even though I fully think we should include such highly notable accusations/denials). In time a consensus may emerge (I certainly hope so), but that time has not come yet. You're new here, so I don't expect you to understand the lengthy discussions these types of disputes normally result in on our site... I would just advise you to be patient and wait to see what other participants have to say. Cheers, — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
@
talk
) 20:57, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Do not include: This claim is ultimately sourced back to Der Spiegel alone, relying in some way on the

Bundesnachrichtendienst. How Der Spiegel got this information is unclear, because Der Spiegel doesn't say. There's no public statement from the BND, let alone evidence. The claim itself - that China would pressure the WHO to not reveal information that China itself had already publicized - doesn't make any sense. This is something that should be confirmed by independent reporting (not other papers citing Der Spiegel) before inclusion. If it were to be included, it would have to be attributed to Der Spiegel and the BND (though how exactly to attribute it to the BND is tricky, because there's no statement by the BND, and we have no idea whether this is an official determination of the BND, something someone in the BND told a Spiegel reporter, etc.), and the context would have to be made clear (China announced human-to-human transmission before this occurred, and the WHO announced it the day after). -Thucydides411 (talk
) 23:03, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

@
talk
) 23:48, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
@
talk
) 23:51, 22 May 2020 (UTC)


Discussion at
Talk:Tedros Adhanom

There's a discussion of this issue also at the Bio for Tedros Adhanom, here [31]. -Darouet (talk) 19:52, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Template:Epidemics

Template:Epidemics is sitting at the bottom as a link instead of being transcluded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.100.139.52 (talk) 05:33, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out. It happened because we ran up against the
technical size limit for the article. I've commented out the template, and we can bring it back once we've gotten the size of the article back under control. {{u|Sdkb}} talk
06:42, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

AutoEd

Is turning into an ongoing problem with edits like this.[32] by User:Jeff G.

Once again it changed "</references></div> to <references /></div>". Is their a way to disable AutoEd on this page? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:10, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@
G. ツ
 12:45, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: See Talk:COVID-19 pandemic/Archive 34#Clump of references. It's apparently causing some technical issue. I'm going to issue an invite at the AutoEd page, since it'd be better to fix the bug than to just disable AutoEd here. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:32, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
@
G. ツ
 22:46, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: You can only use <references /> if all your references are defined in-line. If you're using List-defined references, you put your references in between <references> and </references> tags. The tag is also responsive, so it will display in columns on larger screens (I currently see 4 columns on my 1920x1080 monitor). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:54, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks User:Ahecht Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:17, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
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