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Why we’ve created new language for coronavirus

From ‘covidiots’ to ‘quarantine and chill’, the pandemic has led to many terms that help people laugh and commiserate.

 

Throughout history, challenging circumstances have given rise to new ways of expressing those challenges. George Eliot, the 19th Century writer who was famously frustrated by rigid gender and lifestyle norms, is credited with the first recorded use of the word ‘frustrating’. More recently, Brexit led to a flowering of new words, including the inevitable ‘Bremain’ and ‘Bregret’, and a repurposing of existing words, such as ‘backstop’.

While Brexit may be the closest parallel, the speed of the linguistic change we’re seeing with Covid-19 is unprecedented, says Robert Lawson, a sociolinguist at Birmingham City University. Lawson attributes this to multiple factors: the dizzying pace at which the virus has spread, its dominance in the media and global interconnectivity at a time when social media and remote contact are so important.

Many of the newly popular terms relate to the socially distanced nature of human contact these days, such as ‘virtual happy hour’, ‘covideo party’ and ‘quarantine and chill’. Many use ‘corona’ as a prefix, whether Polish speakers convert ‘coronavirus’ into a verb or English speakers wonder how ‘coronababies’ (the children born or conceived during the pandemic) will fare. And, of course, there are abbreviations, like the ubiquitous ‘WFH’ and the life-saving ‘PPE’.

Old words in a new light

Like everyone else, lexicologists are scrambling to keep up with the changes the pandemic has wrought. According to Fiona McPherson, the senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), back in December ‘coronavirus’ appeared only 0.03 times per million tokens (tokens are the smallest units of language collected and tracked in the OED corpus). The term ‘Covid-19’ was only coined in February, when the WHO announced the official name of the virus. But in April, the figures for both ‘Covid-19’ and ‘coronavirus’ had skyrocketed to about 1,750 per million tokens (suggesting that the two terms are now being used at roughly the same frequency).

Innovative signs: In the UK, 'covidiots' is being used to described those ignoring social distancing rules

All of the terms added to the OED in April, in an unscheduled update, were related to the pandemic in some way, including ‘infodemic’ and ‘elbow bump’. But McPherson notes that the only actual new word added to the dictionary is ‘Covid-19’. The others are pre-existing terms that have gained new resonance at a time when many people are subject to a ‘stay-at-home order’ (US), ‘movement control order’ (Malaysia) or ‘enhanced community quarantine’ (Philippines).

“Although a lot of the words we’re using just now and a lot of the terminology is actually older, a lot of it seems fairly new. ‘Coronavirus’ itself goes back to the 1960s,” she points out.

What McPherson calls the “nuancing of already existing words” can in some cases be subtly harmful. War metaphors invoking ‘battles’ and ‘front-lines’ are being widely applied to the pandemic, yet thinking only in terms of a wartime emergency can detract from longer-term structural changes needed. This has given rise to the project #ReframeCovid, in which linguists collect crowdsourced examples of alternatives to war language.

Inés Olza, a linguist at the University of Navarra in Spain, says she started the project spontaneously on Twitter. She understands the temptation to invoke war metaphors, especially at the start of the pandemic when they were necessary to build unity and mobilise swiftly. But “a sustained use of that metaphor and abuse of it, and the lack of alternative frames, might generate anxiety and might distort things about the pandemic”, she believes.

As well, terms such as ‘natural disaster’ and ‘perfect storm’ can create the impression that the pandemic was inevitable and unavoidable, neglecting the political, economic and environmental contexts that make certain people more exposed. Some healthcare workers have expressed their frustration at being called ‘heroes’, rather than seen as complex, frightened individuals doing a job, who need protective equipment and policy rather than relying on their own sacrifices.

In some cases the language being used isn't appreciated: this US healthcare worker is protesting against a lack of PPE

In some cases the language being used isn’t appreciated: this US healthcare worker is protesting against a lack of PPE

“Speakers are free to use the metaphors they want,” Olza emphasises. “We are not censors.” But she and some of her fellow linguists believe that it’s useful to reflect on language and to have alternative framings for discussing the pandemic – beyond militaristic language that can obscure the roles of individuals and communities, and toward expressions that communicate collective care and individual responsibility. She says that Germans have been especially good at finding non-war terms. German’s compounding of terms, for instance, has allowed for one-off words like ‘Öffnungsdiskussionsorgien’ (‘orgies of discussion’) to describe the seemingly endless policy debates over reopening.

Why humour helps

Overall, there’s a wealth of linguistic creativity that hasn’t yet entered the dictionary, but reflects the role of novel language as a coping mechanism. These innovative usages, Lawson says, “allow us to name whatever it is that’s going on in the world. And once you can name the practices, the events, the social conditions around a particular event, it just gives people a shared vocabulary that they can all use as a bit of a shorthand. I think ultimately if you can name it, you can talk about it; and if you can talk about it, then it can help people cope and get a handle on really difficult situations”.

Writer Karen Russell has found the newly ubiquitous term ‘flatten the curve’ to be reassuring – a reminder of the importance of both individual and collective action, which “alchemizes fear into action”. And both the practice and the terminology of ‘caremongering’, used for instance in Canadian and Indian English, allow for an alternative to scaremongering.

Beyond earnest words like these, a kind of slightly anxious humour is central to many of the ‘coronacoinages’. The German ‘coronaspeck’, like the English ‘Covid 19’, playfully refers to stress eating amid stay-at-home orders. The Spanish ‘covidiota’ and ‘coronaburro’ (a play on ‘burro’, the word for donkey) poke fun at the people disregarding public health advice. ‘Doomscrolling’ describes the hypnotic state of endlessly reading grim internet news. Lawson’s favourite, ‘Blursday’, captures the weakening sense of time when so many days bleed into each other.

I don’t think that by having a little bit of light in the dark, people are making light of the situation – Fiona McPherson

Australian English, no stranger to light-hearted abbreviations, has produced ‘quaz’ for ‘quarantine’ and ‘sanny’ for ‘sanitiser’. Queer and black communities, so often a wellspring of linguistic innovation, have given rise to ‘Miss Rona’ as a slang term for the virus. And for the unsayable, there are always emojis. The folded hands emoji, the medical mask emoji, and the microbe emoji (yes, that exists) have all become more popular during the pandemic.

Some of these emojis and terms might seem flippant, but “I don’t think that by having a little bit of light in the dark, people are making light of the situation”, says McPherson. Lawson agrees: “If you can laugh at them, it makes things more manageable almost, and just helps with people’s psychological health more than anything else.”

Linguists believe that many of the terms currently in vogue won’t endure. The ones with a stronger chance of sticking around post-pandemic are those that describe lasting behavioural changes, such as ‘zoombombing’, which is influenced by ‘photobombing’ and describes the practice of invading someone else’s video call. McPherson reckons that ‘zoombombing’ could become a generic term (like ‘hoovering’ up a mess) even if the company Zoom loses its market dominance.

Ingenuity with vocabulary can also communicate that the current hardships, like many of the coronacoinages, won’t last forever. Olza has taken to referring to the tasks on her ‘corona-agenda’, which can be a subtle way of asking for people’s patience with her temporarily disrupted schedule. Eventually “I will get my usual agenda back,” she says hopefully.

Until then, bring on the quarantinis.

 

Source: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200522-why-weve-created-new-language-for-coronavirus?fbclid=IwAR3THL4GNH09TJFD2ieXlBN1basBk-8m6TPO4S2dSzzpvGfWsld-j7UQvOM

COVID-19 kills as stigma harms families and society

On June 17, Kompas TV reported that hundreds of people had intercepted an ambulance and threatened to set it on fire and forcibly remove the remains of a person who had died after being exposed to COVID-19. It seems they thought they would suffer major problems if the body was buried under COVID-19 protocols. They would, perhaps, be under constant observation by public health personnel and the COVID-19 task force, and their village might be locked down. They might be prohibited from leaving their homes or their neighborhood. They felt they might be shunned by residents of other villages and not even allowed on the roads passing through other villages. Not only might they be ostracized, but the acknowledgement that one of their residents had died of COVID-19 could lead to restrictions on their access to normal activities, including earning a living.

Elsewhere, in a separate report, a COVID-19 victim’s family forcibly brought the remains home from the hospital and prepared the body for burial in accordance with their religious beliefs. They feared that the treatment of the body at the hospital had not followed the procedures required by their religion since the family had not been allowed to witness the process. They could not accept the fact that the body had been placed in a coffin, which they associated with the burial traditions of another religion. The family worried that they would be ostracized because the body had not been prepared according to religious tenets.

Such incidents as these, I believe, require a solution, because seizing mortal remains in this way is extremely dangerous. It was reported that 15 of the people involved in the process of bathing and wrapping the body later tested positive for COVID-19, and their village did, in fact, become a cluster under observation.

During my studies of Medical Anthropology in Amsterdam, we discussed topics such as these in our epidemiology class, viewing them as a cultural issue. “Illness” is actually more than merely the physical condition of a person who is unhealthy. It also involves traditional and cultural values and ways of thinking, which cause the illness to carry a range of other problems, such as prejudice and stigma.

One of the most ancient stigmas was that associated with leprosy. Historically, leprosy originated in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia, particularly India, and then spread throughout the world, including to Indonesia. This disease arrived with the era of colonialism in the 19th century. The bacterium responsible for the disease was first identified by a Swedish scientist in 1837. The traffic of persons between continents in the context of colonialism brought a variety of diseases with it caused by bacteria such as leprosy. The response required not just addressing the disease caused by the “leprae” bacteria but also addressing the additional disasters caused by fear and stigma. To address the spread of the disease and also to stop the “hunting” of lepers, the colonial government built special leprosy hospitals. This followed the model set by a Catholic order that built leper colonies on isolated islands. To reduce stigma and ostracism, these special leprosy hospitals were sometimes called “Lazarus Homes”, taking the name of Saint Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers.

Going beyond the issue of disease, leprosy later became a term to convey racial hatred. Leprosy was used as a metaphor to justify the ostracism or eradication of groups seen as belonging to the “other” on the basis of race, ethnicity or other distinguishing features. Even though leprosy can now be controlled with treatment and quarantine, this metaphor for hatred is still used as an excuse for eliminating others.

In the history of communicable diseases, the stigma is often more malevolent than the disease itself. People living with HIV provide a good example. The legendary singer Freddie Mercury had to keep his illness a secret until just before he died. Although the stigma of persons with HIV is not quite as severe as that of leprosy, a person still needs to think very thoroughly before publicly declaring they have HIV or even a disease considered more common, such as tuberculosis. The “informed consent ” procedure is therefore applied to protect a person’s confidentiality.

Stigma arises along with myth and prejudice. Stigma can be so strong that the patient’s family may also suffer from it. They may repeatedly deny or cover up the fact that someone in their family suffers from a disease that is stigmatized. Experience teaches us that the impact of stigma is often more severe than the disease itself. The sick person will be isolated, shunned or treated as an enemy. The family also suffers shame and humiliation because of the origin or cause of the disease. The custom of pillorying persons with mental problems is one such form of hiding shame. Similar things are often done when a family member has a physical or mental disability.

This sense of shame associated with illness is predictable given the social pressures that are experienced, even though it is not justified. Such feelings are often a form of cowardice of the healthy when they are around someone who is ill. It seems they are unable to imagine the multiple layers of consequences they would face if they did not cover it up. I remember when I was young and living in a village, there was a commotion over the death of a man who died in a firewood storage shed in the middle of a field. It seems the family was trying to hide this old man, a distant relative who was staying with them, because he suffered from acute tuberculosis. The family was afraid they would not be allowed to use the village well. In addition, they were embarrassed that a family member had TB, a “poor people’s disease”. When I was in junior high school, a student below me died from bleeding when her parents tried to perform an abortion because she was pregnant out of wedlock. She was only 13 at the time. The family concealed the pregnancy and did not take her to a doctor when she suffered severe bleeding – all out of a sense of shame.

Feelings of shame or a fear of stigmatization and its consequences, are not only experienced by patients and their families. In the case of COVID-19, fear of being isolated spreads to the wider community, giving rise to collective denial. In other cases, this is done by the authorities in the name of political and economic stability. So, in this situation, the handling of COVID-19 requires not just information about how to combat the spread of the disease but also honesty.

Explanations are needed that will change people’s attitude about COVID-19 so it does not lead to stigma and ostracism. In this regard, the handling of COVID-19 must not only be done by the Ministry of Health but also by institutions that deal directly with the public, such as the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Here, the methods of NGOs that work to combat discrimination and hate speech can also be employed. Cultural experts must join the struggle! Distancing, yes; ostracism, no!

***

Lies Marcoes is a researcher at Rumah Kitab, Jakarta. The original Indonesian version was published on the Rumah Kitab website on June 18.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.

 

Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/06/19/covid-19-kills-as-stigma-harms-families-and-society.html?fbclid=IwAR1rVhvaM9sbLOQiJ6UpBe-uWxN76qbXgYT2Rtsw3C9oMUWweHQEESdL-uY

What the Pandemic Reveals About the Male Ego

Why are the rates of coronavirus deaths far lower in many female-led countries?

By 

Opinion Columnist

President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan at a military base this spring amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Credit…Ritchie B. Tongo/EPA, via Shutterstock

 

Are female leaders better at fighting a pandemic?

I compiled death rates from the coronavirus for 21 countries around the world, 13 led by men and eight by women. The male-led countries suffered an average of 214 coronavirus-related deaths per million inhabitants. Those led by women lost only one-fifth as many, 36 per million.

If the United States had the coronavirus death rate of the average female-led country, 102,000 American lives would have been saved out of the 114,000 lost.

“Countries led by women do seem to be particularly successful in fighting the coronavirus,” noted Anne W. Rimoin, an epidemiologist at U.C.L.A. “New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Norway have done so well perhaps due to the leadership and management styles attributed to their female leaders.”

Let’s start by acknowledging that there have been plenty of wretched female leaders over the years. Indeed, according to research I once did for a book, female leaders around the world haven’t been clearly better than male counterparts even at improving girls’ education or reducing maternal mortality.

There has been solid research that it makes a difference to have more women on boards and in grass-roots positions, but evidence that they make better presidents or prime ministers has been lacking — until Covid-19 came along.

It’s not that the leaders who best managed the virus were all women. But those who bungled the response were all men, and mostly a particular type: authoritarian, vainglorious and blustering. Think of Boris Johnson in Britain, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran and Donald Trump in the United States.

Virtually every country that has experienced coronavirus mortality at a rate of more than 150 per million inhabitants is male-led.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the best-run places have been run by women: New Zealand, Germany, Taiwan,” mused Susan Rice, who was national security adviser under President Barack Obama. “And where we’ve seen things go most badly wrong — the U.S., Brazil, Russia, the U.K. — it’s a lot of male ego and bluster.”

I think the divergence has a great deal to do with that ego and bluster.

“We often joke that men drivers never ask for directions,” observed Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania. “I actually think there’s something to that also in terms of women’s leadership, in terms of recognizing expertise and asking experts for advice, and men sort of barreling ahead like they got it.”

He has a point. Those leaders who handled the virus best were those who humbly consulted public health experts and acted quickly, and many were women; in contrast, male authoritarians who botched the response were suspicious of experts and too full of themselves.

“I really get it,” Trump said when he visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March. Surrounded by medical experts, he added, “Maybe I have natural ability,” and he wondered aloud if he should have become a scientist.

(Given that Trump said in January that Covid-19 was “totally under control,” he has his answer. And peer review might not have been kind to his ideas about bleach.)

Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand.

Credit…Pool photo by Mark Mitchell

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.

Credit…Pool photo by Andreas Gora

While women have generally outshone men as international leaders, that does not seem true within the United States. Some female governors have done better, others worse, so there isn’t an obvious gender gap at home.

It’s also possible that this isn’t about female leaders but about the kind of country that chooses a woman to lead it.

Companies with more female executives on average perform better than those with fewer women, but analysts think that the reason isn’t just the brilliance of women leaders. Rather, companies that are culturally open to having senior women are also more willing to embrace other innovations, and it may be this innovative spirit that leads to higher profitability. Likewise, countries willing to elect female prime ministers may be those more inclined to listen to epidemiologists.

Yet I think that there’s also a difference in the leadership itself.

“Women lead often in a very different style from men,” said Margot Wallstrom, a former Swedish foreign minister, citing examples from Norway, Germany and New Zealand of women with low-key, inclusive and evidence-based leadership.

Wallstrom also noted that public health is a traditional “home turf” concern for many women leaders. Grant Miller, an expert in health economics at Stanford University, found that as states, one by one, granted the vote to women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, those states then also invested more in sanitation and public health — saving some 20,000 children’s lives a year. Boys were thus huge beneficiaries of women’s suffrage.

One trap for female politicians is that brashness can be effective for male candidates, but researchers find that male and female voters alike are turned off by women who seem self-promotional. That forces women in politics to master the art of communicating effectively in a low-key way — just what’s needed in a pandemic.

“Perhaps the skills that have led them to reach the top,” said Rimoin, the U.C.L.A. epidemiologist, “are the same skills that are currently needed to bring a country together.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The Times since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can sign up for his free, twice-weekly email newsletter and follow him on InstagramHis latest book is “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope.” @NickKristofFacebook

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/opinion/sunday/women-leaders-coronavirus.html

What Do Countries With The Best Coronavirus Responses Have In Common? Women Leaders

Looking for examples of true leadership in a crisis? From Iceland to Taiwan and from Germany to New Zealand, women are stepping up to show the world how to manage a messy patch for our human family. Add in Finland, Iceland and Denmark, and this pandemic is revealing that women have what it takes when the heat rises in our Houses of State. Many will say these are small countries, or islands, or other exceptions. But Germany is large and leading, and the UK is an island with very different outcomes. These leaders are gifting us an attractive alternative way of wielding power. What are they teaching us?

 

Truth

Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, stood up early and calmly told her countrymen that this was a serious bug that would infect up to 70% of the population. “It’s serious,” she said, “take it seriously.” She did, so they did too. Testing began right from the get go. Germany jumped right over the phases of denial, anger and disingenuousness we’ve seen elsewhere. The country’s numbers are far below its European neighbours, and there are signs they may be able to start loosening restrictions relatively soon.

Decisiveness

List of Countries with Female Leaders and Coronavirus death rates

Data from the European Centre for Disease Control as of April 12, 2020

 20-FIRST

 

Among the first and the fastest moves was Tsai Ing-wen’s in Taiwan. Back in January, at the first sign of a new illness, she introduced 124 measures to block the spread, without having to resort to the lockdowns that have become common elsewhere. She is now sending 10 million face masks to the US and Europe. Tsai managed what CNN has called “among the world’s best” responses, keeping the epidemic under control, still reporting only six deaths.

Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand was early to lockdown and crystal clear on the maximum level of alert she was putting the country under – and why. She imposed self-isolation on people entering New Zealand astonishingly early, when there were just 6 cases in the whole country, and banned foreigners entirely from entering soon after. Clarity and decisiveness are saving New Zealand from the storm. As of mid-April they have suffered only four deaths, and where other countries talk of lifting restrictions, Ardern is adding to them, making all returning New Zealanders quarantine in designated locations for 14 days.

Tech

Iceland, under the leadership of Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, is offering free coronavirus testing to all its citizens, and will become a key case study in the true spread and fatality rates of Covid-19. Most countries have limited testing to people with active symptoms. Iceland is going whole hog. In proportion to its population the country has already screened five times as many people as South Korea has, and instituted a thorough tracking system that means they haven’t had to lockdown… or shut schools.

Sanna Marin became the world’s youngest head of state when she was elected last December in Finland. It took a millennial leader to spearhead using social media influencers as key agents in battling the coronavirus crisis. Recognising that not everyone reads the press, they are inviting influencers of any age to spread fact-based information on managing the pandemic.

 

Love

Norway’s Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, had the innovative idea of using television to talk directly to her country’s children. She was building on the short, 3-minute press conference that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had held a couple of days earlier. Solberg held a dedicated press conference where no adults were allowed. She responded to kids’ questions from across the country, taking time to explain why it was OK to feel scared. The originality and obviousness of the idea takes one’s breath away. How many other simple, humane innovations would more female leadership unleash?

Generally, the empathy and care which all of these female leaders have communicated seems to come from an alternate universe than the one we have gotten used to. It’s like their arms are coming out of their videos to hold you close in a heart-felt and loving embrace. Who knew leaders could sound like this? Now we do.

Now, compare these leaders and stories with the strongmen using the crisis to accelerate a terrifying trifecta of authoritarianism: blame-“others”, capture-the-judiciary, demonize-the-journalists, and blanket their country in I-will-never-retire darkness (Trump, Bolsonaro, Obrador, Modi, Duterte, Orban, Putin, Netanyahu…).

There have been years of research timidly suggesting that women’s leadership styles might be different and beneficial. Instead, too many political organisations and companies are still working to get women to behave more like men if they want to lead or succeed. Yet these national leaders are case study sightings of the seven leadership traits men may want to learn from women.

It’s time we recognised it – and elected more of it.

 

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/04/13/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders/?fbclid=IwAR36nQtLPGG827vxLnIWjFtsGLBaDMV02oMKY5W48IDKD48DlGhcZRuz11E#48e867943dec