“What’s in a name?”

“that which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.” -William Shakespeare.

I’m wondering, if it weren’t in our capabilities to cheaply and quickly sequence DNA, had we not put a name to this particular Coronavirus and tracked its spread globally, would there be as much panic?

When you name something, you give it power. This is seen in biblical text, like Abraham and Sarah. Their renaming gave them power. We have separated out this now identifiable URI and named it COVID-19.

Is this our new MO? We will start naming other URIs and incite panic? To quote Olaf from Frozen II, “My theory that advancing technology will lead to our doom.”