Talk:Hong Kong flu

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 18:16, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Hong Kong flu → 1968 flu pandemic – Current title looks too biased and less than accurate. The proposed title should reflect the events that occurred. Per WP:COMMONNAMES, a commonly-used title should not be used if inaccurate. A precedent is Spanish flu, which redirects to 1918 flu pandemic. --Relisted. Hot Stop talk-contribs 19:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC) George Ho (talk) 22:00, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment "Spanish flu" is not inaccurate. Spain was the first place where the flu was properly characterized. It's only excessive political correctness that got it renamed. It should be returned to "Spanish flu", just as "Alzheimer's disease" is not a disease that was suffered by Alzheimer, it was a disease characterized by Alzheimer. "Lou Gehrig's disease" is a disease suffered by Lou Gehrig, which does not appear under that name. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 23:47, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

You haven't read much, have you? Theories of causes and first incidents were explained in that article, causing "Spanish flu" to be less accurate. --George Ho (talk) 12:28, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Did you read what I wrote? I said first characterized, this is not the same as the source or the origin, or the cause. Thus my example of Alzheimer's. Same goes for Paget's disease and Down syndrome. The event of the characterization of properties is a correct way to name things. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 21:22, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Down syndrome? Boy, are you extending to mental disorders. Look, let's stick to flu crisis that happened in 1968. I just used the 1918 flu crisis as a precedent, so let's discuss that elsewhere. Maybe I could have other diseases or disorders renamed, but I can't... yet. That'll take me centuries. George Ho (talk) 22:35, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

It's a disease, this is a disease, disease can be and are named for where they are characterized, this includes cities, countries, labs, and doctors. They can also be named for where they are discovered, first patient, the cause, the symptoms, etc. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 00:42, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Still, "Hong Kong flu" looks biased, even when commonly used, but WP:POVTITLE allows such. Alternately, WP:NDESC encourages more neutral titles. George Ho (talk) 09:42, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• Support per points raised at the nomination. --Cold Season (talk) 17:26, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

revision of total U.S. deaths statistic; addition of worldwide death statistic; revision of reasons for lower death rate for flu (whole flu, not just the 1969-1972 wave(s))

my three revisions are followed below with justification and sources for the edits:

1. the figure of 33,800 total U.S. deaths was replaced with the figure 100,000 U.S. deaths
2. the figure of 1 million total worldwide deaths was added
3. the passage offering an explanation for why later seasonal waves of the Hon Kong flu were milder than the first wave was rewritten

reasons for revisions (numbers correspond to revisions above):

1. the figure of 33,800 is taken from a CDC page on pandemics that is obviously outdated as can be seen from its html coding; the last pandemic it cites as "most recent" pandemics are from 1997-1998; further, the entire page was accessed through the website archive.org's "Way Back Machine" (the source is clearly outdated; the CDC has clearly revised this figure of 33,800 to 100,000--see the source now cited in the article: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html)
2. the same CDC article on the Hong Kong flu cites 1 million deaths as the total worldwide; this is added to the article as important information not previously present
3. the passage as it originally appeared in this article offered an explanation as to why the purported "later waves" of the Hong Kong flu were milder and resulted in fewer deaths than the first, more deadly strain of 1968 to 1969; this explanation was based on a misreading/misinterpretation of its source (the outdated CDC page on pandemics housed in archive.org's "Way Back Machine"); leaving aside the fact that the source is outdated and assuming that the explanation for a milder appearance of the flu is valid, even this original source did not say anything about why "later waves" of the flu were milder than earlier waves, it merely states, "There could be several reasons why fewer people in the U.S. died due to this virus." (https://web.archive.org/web/20090331065518/http://www.pandemicflu.gov/general/historicaloverview.html) Even if someone thought that the term "virus" here were ambiguous (does it refer to the H3N2 virus or only the first generations of the virus from 1968 to 1969?), the most cogent reading would be that it refers to the virus as a whole, but there isn't even any ambiguity: it simply offers reasons why the "virus" resulted in fewer deaths, not one season of the virus
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cygnusaurus (talk • contribs) 01:18, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I notice that your changes were made in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic whereupon the relative severity of past pandemics has become a politically sensitive matter. I wonder precisely when the CDC changed its accounting of American Hong Kong flu deaths and how independent the CDC currently is from the White House. It seems rather odd to accuse a statistic having to do with a fifty-two-year-old historical event as "outdated". After all, the event itself is very much "dated". I would suggest in the first place that the article make it extremely clear--that is, patently obvious--over what stretch of time the deaths occurred, as specifically as possible (at least over how many months, preferably days). I would suggest in the second place that we need at least two independent valid sources confirming those deaths over precisely that stretch of time. TheScotch (talk) 21:34, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2009 flu pandemic which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:33, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 21 March 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jerm (talk) 16:39, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

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1968 flu pandemic → Hong Kong flu – The renaming of this article from "Hong Kong flu" to "1968 flu pandemic" was unsubstantiated. Almost every source (verified by searches and Google Ngrams) refers to this outbreak as the "Hong Kong flu". The citation in support of the alternate name is a misinterpretation of an Encyclopedia Britannica article in which are not found the words "1968 flu pandemic" without also being spliced by "Hong Kong". —General534 (talk) 11:10, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support per nom. The old RM cited a WP:CONSISTENCY argument with the 1918 flu pandemic article. Now that there's been a recent RM which established Spanish flu as the title of that article, this one should follow suit, since it's clearly more recognizable and the WP:COMMONNAME. Nohomersryan (talk) 04:26, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Can we stop with this new wave PC please? Oppashi ^Talk 13:14, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support - per WP:UCRN. The COMMONNAME is definitively, and has been, for decades, Hong Kong Flu. If at some point in future the balance of the half-century-long base of WP:RS ceases to refer to it by its current name, then we can begin a discussion of whether to change the status quo. XavierItzm (talk) 17:00, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support - It's way better to use the common name. BTW, I came from Hong Kong, and I totally support the move. Raysonho (talk) 02:07, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Vaccine?

We have this statement: "The disease was allowed to spread through the population without restrictions on economic activity, until a vaccine became available four months after it had started." Is this correct?Four months after it [the pandemic?] started seems a very short time. I can't check the source (Wall Street Journal) because it's behind a paywall. Arcturus (talk) 16:04, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• I found another interesting source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7144439/#bib52. It has a graph showing an increasing number of available doses starting from 25 November. The first case was reported in July, so it validates the four months claim. It doesn't explain how the vaccine was developed so quickly (my money would be on the fact it was a variant of influenza which caused the pandemic of 1957-58, so it wasn't completely new). I take a different issue with this sentence, as to me it implies (also due to its placement in the article) that the vaccine had a material impact on ending the pandemic, but I can find no evidence of this. The source above says For most of the population, the pandemic vaccine was “too little and too late,” and the effect of the vaccine on reducing pandemic spread was questionable. I don't have time for this right now but I may work this into the article later. Pear-on-willow (talk) 11:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)