Don't Say "MonkeyPox"

The World Health Organisation has announced a brand new, stigma-free, name for the Monkeypox after US President Joe Biden denounced the name as racist.

The disease transmitted - not exclusively but overwhelmingly - through gay sex will henceforth be known as the mpox.

The creative geniuses at the United Nations came up with the new moniker after a consultation process that included experts from medical, scientific, classification and statistics advisory committees.

Would you believe representatives from government authorities of 45 different countries had input?

It's a good thing Australian taxpayers donated $47 million to the WHO in 2020/21 or else the new name might have been a complete dud.

Fortunately, no-one will ever think the "m" in mpox stands for "monkey", as in monkeypox.

Well at least, Joe Biden won't ever make the connection.

Joe "if you don't vote for me you ain't black" Biden did, however, make the connection between "monkey" and people of colour. And this worried him greatly because he evidently feared other people - specifically racists - might make the exact same connection that he did.

You could almost be forgiven for thinking the only thing racist about the name was Joe Biden's suggestion that it was racist. But I digress.

Biden was so horrified that other people might think the very thoughts he himself had thunk that he threatened to call the virus by a different name, without WHO approval, just so that he would stop thinking it.

Sleazydisopox was considered inappropriate but inflationpox, openborderspox, netzeropox and democratpox were all on the table before experts at the United Nations came up with mpox.

Some feared that if it had not been for the quick thinking of the World Health Organisation, people in the United States could have been lining up to be treated for lying-dog-faced-pony-solider-pox.

The other option was simply to rename monkeys.

The discarded and henceforth not to be used name was given to what is now known as the mpox back in 1958 when Danish researchers discovered it in colonies of you-know-whats.

This was 64 years before the WHO brains trust had come up with official guidelines for naming diseases so as to not cause cultural offence or trigger Democrats to project their thoughts onto others.

But the Danes had no way of anticipating that a future US president would start imagining what racist people might think whenever the name that sounds like skunky but starts with an "m" was mentioned.

Officials at the WHO are playing down concerns that mpox may cause people to think of boy bands.

The WHO said on Monday that the mpox's old name would remain searchable in the International Classification of Diseases so people could access historic information, but warned that people should try very hard not to think like Joe Biden when doing so.

Meanwhile, some are concerned that Joe Biden might imagine what racists might imagine when they hear someone refer to the Black Death, and have suggested it should therefore be known as the b death, just to be on the safe side.

Of course, no such change could happen before hundreds of experts from dozens of countries were consulted.

The one thing we do know is that a severe case of Donkeypox in the White House threatens to turn American into a laughing stock.