U.S. officials risk public health by equating COVID-19 with places far from home.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Emphasizing foreign origins of a disease can have racist connotations and implications for how people understand their own risk of disease.
The virus that causes COVID-19 seems able to spread to anyone, anywhere.
NIAID/Flickr
While identifying a new disease by its place of origin seems intuitive, history shows that doing so can have serious consequences for the people that live there.
A health worker prepares to administer Ebola vaccination in the north-western Democratic Republic of the Congo.
EPA-EFE/STR
Uganda is the testing ground for a new vaccine that could work on more strains of the Ebola virus and other haemorrhagic fevers.