WORDS

August 22, 2020

When the Coronavirus started to appear in the news in early 2020, we started learning new words. We learned that "Coronavirus" is the name for the bug that causes the disease, but not the disease itself. Epidemiologists have a sophisticated and specific name for the infection but it is popularly called "Covid-19". Now it seems to be abbreviated "C-19" since everyone knows what we're talking about. 

It was all new (or "novel") back then, and we heard the word "unprecedented" a lot. Now that we're almost six months into sheltering in place, the restrictions on our lives seem almost normal. I'm hearing the word "pivot" now. Businesses are "pivoting" or turning around, changing their strategy and adapting to the new reality. 

I got tired of hearing about "sanitizing"; there was even a video about how to “sanitize" each of the items you brought home from the grocery store. The process involved rubber gloves and sanitizing wipes and a lot of work. Our epidemiologist neighbor offered to shop for our groceries and promised to deliver them to us "properly sanitized". We now know more about the life-span of the virus on inert surfaces, so "sanitizing" everything does not seem so important. 

All of us are now familiar with the principle of "herd immunity" and maybe we even know what the "R0 number" is. We practice "social distancing" and wear masks. There's a LOT of discussion about masks, pro and con, degrees of protection, styles of fit, stylishness. I was interested to see many of the nurses and doctors in the hospital wearing close-fitting caps that covered their hair and came down below their ears. A button on either side of the cap was the attachment point for the ear loops of the mask. It looked comfortable. 

With all the questions about in-person school or on-line school, we're hearing about "pods", those supposedly closed groups of people who associate only with other pod members. All the people living in one household form a pod, but they may enlarge their pod to include other households, for example to homeschool a group of children from three or four families. To make this work, it depends on the reliability of everyone staying in their pod and not escaping into the outside world for even a brief time. We'll see how that works in the long run. 

What will the next new word be? And which one will be the word of the year?