Noroviruses haven’t always been called noroviruses. In 1929 Dr. John Zahorsky wrote about a history of gastrointestinal illness events, which would become norovirus After seeing children develop sporadic cases of vomiting, supplemented by watery diarrhea each year between November and May, over 30 years of clinical practice, he coined the term winter vomiting sickness. According to a 1950 Time Magazine article, Dr. Zahorsky was a pediatrician working extolling the vitures of good sanitation during birth and infant care – one of the fathers of disease prevention.

Within ten years [after graduating medical school]  he had set some doctors sniffing with his idea that children’s colds were more often caused by contagion than by exposure to bad weather. Soon he was protesting against taking newborn babies from their mothers and massing them in an aseptic nursery.

In 1968, one of these winter vomiting sickness outbreaks occurred in an elementary school in Norwalk, OH. Teachers and students were both affected, with 32% of the primary cases spreading illness to others in their families and homes. After a collaborative investigation with researchers from NIH and Walter-Reed Army medical center a causative agent was found in the feces of the ill — a 27nm sized virus particle. Zahorsky’s illnesses then took on the name Norwalk. Since then, the name has morphed to Norwalk and Norwalk-like viruses, which begat noroviruses.

As the weather turns cold, noro in the population emerges (and becomes somewhat more stable in the environment). Which leads to illnesses like the below.