From Wuhan to Covid-19

We make #distinctions constantly. We really cannot NOT make a distinction. Despite their constancy, like breathing, it becomes something we take for granted. Few of us, when starting the car, remember the early days when our natal minds struggled with distinguishing a car from a truck. When the words didn’t fall from the lips with ease—t-r-u-c-k— when sounding it out slowly paralleled our brain’s processing of what it was and what it wasn’t. That’s why whenever something new comes along, I pay particular attention to how we grapple with distinguishing it: New mars rover discoveries, new chupacabra, new scientific discoveries, new deadly virus strains, etc.

Distinguishing this new virus occurs on many levels and evolves overtime:

* Wuhan virus
* Coronavirus
* Part of the corona viruses that includes the common cold
* novel coronavirus
* Symptoms like the flu but different and deadlier
• “the one that proteins kind of look like a crown under an electron microscope
* Not SARS or MERS but equally or possibly more deadly and scary?
* 2019nCOV
* Covid-19

This interview is excellent in showing all the problems and considerations wrought in making a single distinction. https://www.npr.org/…/coronavirus-presents-first-test-of-ne…

DSRP helps us understand this boundary creating distinction process as requiring two elements: an identity and an other. So we think of distinctions in shorthand as “Distinction-identity/other” or just “Dio”). We cannot distinguishing this new coronavirus without comparing and contrasting it to its other near-neighbors (i.e., SARS, MERS, Coronavirus, etc) and evening to other things it’s like but not the same as (i.e., a crown, the flu, etc).

Because the virus itself will perpetually be thought of in a negative way, we should be careful that whatever name we give it isn’t tied to a people, place, or thing. Stephen Colbert did a bit last night on the new name: Covind-19. Not tied to a place or people, but not great for the long standing cable connectivity company called Covid (covid dot com).

#systemsthinking #dsrp #systemsthinkingdaily #cabreraresearch #distinctionmaking #boundary #identityother

To avoid giving offense or creating stigma, the WHO guidelines recommend against naming new pathogens — the emerging coronavirus, for instance — after people, places, ethnic groups, animals or foods.