Swine Flu and Dracula Sneezes

Just two of the phrases prompted by the Influenza A (H1N1)virus.

An Israeli minister has advocated renaming swine flu in an attempt to make the virus religiously inoffensive, Julian Kossoff reported in The Telegraph:

Demonstrating a bizarre sense of priorities, Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman, from the ultra orthodox party United Torah Judaism, decreed swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork.

Litzman is not alone in grappling with what to call the virus. Pork producers, for obvious reasons, also favor the (non-porcine) term Mexican flu; the European Union’s Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou has advocated (the already out-of-date) “novel flu”; and World Animal Health proposed (the curiously specific) “North American flu.”

The non-profit SaveCalifornia.com decided that what A (H1N1) needed was an alarmist prefix, and promptly re-branded the disease “killer Mexican flu.” British Professor John Oxford went one step further, warning thatswine flu could combine with avian flu to form an “Armageddon virus.”

Satirical Web site The Spoof suggested that, to reassure tourists, the virus be called “Miss Piggy Flu” – which was disturbingly close to The Sun’s recentheadline, “Piggies in The Muddle.”

However, in a bid for sobriety, Ed Pilkington declared in The Guardian that the virus’s technical name, “Influenza A (H1N1) virus, human” remains “the certain front-runner to become the household reference to the new virus”:

The label may well catch on. It’s snappy, has a ring to it, and most importantly offends precisely no one.

Many of the techniques promoted to contain the virus focus on the dangers of the sneeze. Britain’s National Health Service has publicized the slogan “Catch It, Bin It, Kill It.” And, as Reuters reported, some American students have developed their own nickname for a prophylactic sneezing technique:

California Schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell said that last week teachers reminded students that if they have to sneeze, to put their mouths into the crook of one of their elbows. “The students started calling that the Dracula Sneeze, and we picked up on that.”