Something new and bad is always blowing through — winds roar and cities flood, or people cough and die. Whether it is a hurricane or a dire new epidemic, each iteration will be similar enough to previous ones that we recognise it, but different enough that it needs a new name. And here meteorology and medicine have formally parted ways. The split became official a few months ago, when the World Health Organization (WHO) issued strict new “best practice” guidelines for naming human infections. As anyone named Katrina or Sandy knows well, the weather people find it useful to tag catastrophe with a human name. The health people...
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