Censorship Doesn't Just Stifle Speech — It Can Cause Disease To Spread

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 23, 2013 @10:25AM from the information-wants-to-be-free-and-so-do-viruses dept.

Lasrick writes "Maryn McKenna at Wired explores fears of a pandemic of MERS after October's hajj to Saudi Arabia, the annual pilgrimage to Islam's holy sites: 'The reason is MERS: Middle East respiratory syndrome, a disease that has been simmering in the region for months. The virus is new, recorded in humans for the first time in mid-2012. It is dire, having killed more than half of those who contracted it. And it is mysterious, far more so than it should be—because Saudi Arabia, where the majority of cases have clustered, has been tight-lipped about the disease's spread, responding slowly to requests for information and preventing outside researchers from publishing their findings about the syndrome.'"

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Re:Rename the disease and awareness will shoot up by Quasimodem · 2013-08-23 12:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have confirmed that players, Carl Nicks and Lawrence Tynes, are being treated for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
Perhaps the infection will get a more user-friendly name like Buccaneers' disease, sort of like Legionnaires disease did for legionella pneumophila.
If they don't, they should at least find a way to throw a couple of vowels into the acronym, like SARS. Civilians can't seem to really get behind fearing something, or taking precautions against it, unless they can pronounce the darn name.