Language of the Coronavirus World
Quick note: This is my first blog post in a long time due to the hectic nature of this semester so far, but I will be hopefully posting two blog posts a week for the next couple weeks in order to get back on track.
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To say that everybody is talking about the coronavirus would be inaccurate: that was a week and a half ago. Covid-19 has gone from a distant, little known phenomenon to a topic of conversation and jokes to what it is now which is a fact of life. The virus has any of us who are following the guidance of authorities seriously staying indoors - indefinitely. Something that has such an impact on the daily lives of not just our country, but the entire world must be impacting the language we use, and it is.
The first word I'd like to discuss is the term "pandemic". The World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a global pandemic earlier this month, but "pandemic" is not within the everyday vocabulary of most people, so what does it mean? Well "pandemic" is similar to "epidemic", a word more often used and there is a lot of confusion between the two and it's essential to describe both. While both indicate the spread of disease, an epidemic is when a disease spreads quickly and impermanently within a small area or locality, but a pandemic is when a disease spreads widely to an entire country or to the entire world, and a pandemic is not likely to subside too soon. Looking at WHOs choice of wording is important because it indicates that leading health officials believe that this disease will not only infiltrate almost every community around the globe but that they believe that coronavirus is here to stay for some time.
"Social Distancing" is the next term that was not on my radar at least before this crisis. Social distancing is any practice that is likely to reduce the number of people interacting in close proximity to each other. This can mean institutional choices, like events such as a concert getting canceled, or college shifting to online classes and digital spaces. This can also, and perhaps more importantly, mean personal choices that some people don't seem to get from the term. I personally know friends who have planned "coronacations" and corona parties that they would not have otherwise had without this crisis. The first thing my best friend back home did upon learning classes were canceled was to book a flight to Florida. By taking personal action and choosing not to interact socially with people, we can make sure that other people do not spread the virus to us, and that we do not spread the virus to others. If all people act in this way, the virus will be significantly less severe and less widespread for us all.
The last terms I'd like to talk about is "isolation" and "quarantine". These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, and while they accomplish the same thing, they do not mean the same thing. Both practices help stem the spread of disease, but isolation is when sick people separate themselves from those who are not sick, and quarantine is when the flow of people is stopped in order to prevent the spread of disease. For all those who are staying at their homes and not leaving, yet don't have the virus, you're all currently quarantining.
I think it's important that we learn what all these new terms mean. With all this misinformation, and well, just a lack of information in general, combined with this drastic change in the way we live our lives, we need to know what the words mean. When politicians, the media, and health officials use terms we don't fully understand, we need to strive to better understand them in order to play our part in fighting this crisis better.
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To say that everybody is talking about the coronavirus would be inaccurate: that was a week and a half ago. Covid-19 has gone from a distant, little known phenomenon to a topic of conversation and jokes to what it is now which is a fact of life. The virus has any of us who are following the guidance of authorities seriously staying indoors - indefinitely. Something that has such an impact on the daily lives of not just our country, but the entire world must be impacting the language we use, and it is.
The first word I'd like to discuss is the term "pandemic". The World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a global pandemic earlier this month, but "pandemic" is not within the everyday vocabulary of most people, so what does it mean? Well "pandemic" is similar to "epidemic", a word more often used and there is a lot of confusion between the two and it's essential to describe both. While both indicate the spread of disease, an epidemic is when a disease spreads quickly and impermanently within a small area or locality, but a pandemic is when a disease spreads widely to an entire country or to the entire world, and a pandemic is not likely to subside too soon. Looking at WHOs choice of wording is important because it indicates that leading health officials believe that this disease will not only infiltrate almost every community around the globe but that they believe that coronavirus is here to stay for some time.
"Social Distancing" is the next term that was not on my radar at least before this crisis. Social distancing is any practice that is likely to reduce the number of people interacting in close proximity to each other. This can mean institutional choices, like events such as a concert getting canceled, or college shifting to online classes and digital spaces. This can also, and perhaps more importantly, mean personal choices that some people don't seem to get from the term. I personally know friends who have planned "coronacations" and corona parties that they would not have otherwise had without this crisis. The first thing my best friend back home did upon learning classes were canceled was to book a flight to Florida. By taking personal action and choosing not to interact socially with people, we can make sure that other people do not spread the virus to us, and that we do not spread the virus to others. If all people act in this way, the virus will be significantly less severe and less widespread for us all.
The last terms I'd like to talk about is "isolation" and "quarantine". These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, and while they accomplish the same thing, they do not mean the same thing. Both practices help stem the spread of disease, but isolation is when sick people separate themselves from those who are not sick, and quarantine is when the flow of people is stopped in order to prevent the spread of disease. For all those who are staying at their homes and not leaving, yet don't have the virus, you're all currently quarantining.
I think it's important that we learn what all these new terms mean. With all this misinformation, and well, just a lack of information in general, combined with this drastic change in the way we live our lives, we need to know what the words mean. When politicians, the media, and health officials use terms we don't fully understand, we need to strive to better understand them in order to play our part in fighting this crisis better.
Recently, I read about how definitions of "airborne" differ, which can really impact our ideas about the virus.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-airborne-go-outside-masks/609235/
Note: don't post multiple times a week; just keep posting once a week.