Medical personnel assist a subject at the swab station during a free, drive-thru testing site for COVID-19 at Long Beach City College’s Pacific Coast Campus in Long Beach. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.
One way COVID-19 has brought us all together is that it’s broadened our vocabulary. We all talk funny now, with our lexicon littered with once-arcane medical and quasi-scientific jargon.
Here’s a brief list of words and phrases, like “droplets,” we’ve learned because of coronavirus:
Coronavirus: Yes, we all had our little fun making Mexican beer jokes, and a likely apocryphal gag was going around for a while that Corona beer sales were tanking because—what—people thought the disease was bottled with the beer? It’s true that no product wants to have its name suddenly linked to a deadly disease, but I think the beer will do fine, certainly better than Ayds, the appetite-suppressant candy. There are several types of coronaviruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to SARS.
COVID-19: Our current “silent enemy,” that was discovered in 2019, hence the -19 tag. It doesn’t mean it’s the 19th time a coronavirus has surfaced, just for your information, Kellyanne.
Pandemic: It’s not a new word in our vocabulary, but it’s climbing up the charts in terms of frequency of usage. It’s when an epidemic goes global, like now.
Drive-thru testing: In which a medical staff swabs your nose to collect cells to be sent off to a laboratory to determine if you have COVID-19. It’s the least amount of fun you can have in a drive-thru. And, no, you don’t get to talk to a clown.
Droplets: Another old word, but now it’s been dragged through the mud to refer to minuscule bits of moisture that are rocketed out of people when they sneeze or a cough. When this is all over, let’s make a pact to not use the word “droplets” ever again.
Flattening the curve: You can graph the rate of COVID-19 cases and deaths. In most cases, the numbers have gone from zero to, miraculously, or at least exponentially, dizzying heights in a matter of weeks. To make the curve on the graph stop growing and level off and go more horizontal than vertical, is what flattening the curve is all about. To ease off restrictions too quickly would “pooch up” the curve, or inflate it, and risk starting this whole stay-at-home all over again. Luckily for me, if that happens, I have the first 37 columns already finished and ready to reprint.
Isolation: Keeping a person with a confirmed case of COVID-19 (or other contagious disease) away from people who are not sick. For my purposes, I am not, technically, in isolation, because I don’t have a confirmed case of COVID-19, but I am in “self-isolation” (see below). In these columns, I use the terms “quarantine,” “isolation,” “sheltered-in-place,” “cloistered,” “all alone in this cold, hard, uncaring world” and “falsely imprisoned on some trumped-up charge” interchangeably.
N95 respirator: This spring was the first time I’ve heard of an N95 respirator, or mask, and now I can’t get my hands on one. Your N95 is not a surgical mask, but, as you might’ve gathered from the name, a respirator, one that filters out 95% of particles in the air (see “droplets” above). Medical workers need them a lot more than you, and by extension, I, do.
Quarantine: A form of isolation that separates and isolates people who have been exposed to a disease to see if they become sick. By this definition, I am not, literally, in quarantine, despite the title of these columns. Alliteration. It’s all about alliteration.
Self-isolation: Voluntarily putting oneself through an unknowable number of days of isolation for a few reasons. First, because Gov. Gavin Newsom, always on the lookout for my safety, has strongly suggested that I, and others of my demographic (a word that generally includes age), stay at home, and, secondly, I thought it would be fun and relaxing to spend a couple of weeks at home with a pile of dogs and a stack of books. Once again, Gov. Newsom was right, and I was wrong.
Shelter-in-place order: It’s an order for people to stay in their homes in order to slow or stop the spread of COVID-19, usually with a few exceptions that include walking or biking or going to your grocery store or pharmacy. And, in Georgia, bowling alleys. People who work in critical, or “essential” businesses as well as health care workers and public safety personnel are generally exempted. And, in Georgia, the person who runs the bowling alley’s shoe-rental kiosk.
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
Quarantine Chronicles Day 37: How we talk now—a guide to COVID-speak
One way COVID-19 has brought us all together is that it’s broadened our vocabulary. We all talk funny now, with our lexicon littered with once-arcane medical and quasi-scientific jargon.
Here’s a brief list of words and phrases, like “droplets,” we’ve learned because of coronavirus:
Coronavirus: Yes, we all had our little fun making Mexican beer jokes, and a likely apocryphal gag was going around for a while that Corona beer sales were tanking because—what—people thought the disease was bottled with the beer? It’s true that no product wants to have its name suddenly linked to a deadly disease, but I think the beer will do fine, certainly better than Ayds, the appetite-suppressant candy. There are several types of coronaviruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to SARS.
COVID-19: Our current “silent enemy,” that was discovered in 2019, hence the -19 tag. It doesn’t mean it’s the 19th time a coronavirus has surfaced, just for your information, Kellyanne.
Pandemic: It’s not a new word in our vocabulary, but it’s climbing up the charts in terms of frequency of usage. It’s when an epidemic goes global, like now.
Drive-thru testing: In which a medical staff swabs your nose to collect cells to be sent off to a laboratory to determine if you have COVID-19. It’s the least amount of fun you can have in a drive-thru. And, no, you don’t get to talk to a clown.
Droplets: Another old word, but now it’s been dragged through the mud to refer to minuscule bits of moisture that are rocketed out of people when they sneeze or a cough. When this is all over, let’s make a pact to not use the word “droplets” ever again.
Flattening the curve: You can graph the rate of COVID-19 cases and deaths. In most cases, the numbers have gone from zero to, miraculously, or at least exponentially, dizzying heights in a matter of weeks. To make the curve on the graph stop growing and level off and go more horizontal than vertical, is what flattening the curve is all about. To ease off restrictions too quickly would “pooch up” the curve, or inflate it, and risk starting this whole stay-at-home all over again. Luckily for me, if that happens, I have the first 37 columns already finished and ready to reprint.
Isolation: Keeping a person with a confirmed case of COVID-19 (or other contagious disease) away from people who are not sick. For my purposes, I am not, technically, in isolation, because I don’t have a confirmed case of COVID-19, but I am in “self-isolation” (see below). In these columns, I use the terms “quarantine,” “isolation,” “sheltered-in-place,” “cloistered,” “all alone in this cold, hard, uncaring world” and “falsely imprisoned on some trumped-up charge” interchangeably.
N95 respirator: This spring was the first time I’ve heard of an N95 respirator, or mask, and now I can’t get my hands on one. Your N95 is not a surgical mask, but, as you might’ve gathered from the name, a respirator, one that filters out 95% of particles in the air (see “droplets” above). Medical workers need them a lot more than you, and by extension, I, do.
Quarantine: A form of isolation that separates and isolates people who have been exposed to a disease to see if they become sick. By this definition, I am not, literally, in quarantine, despite the title of these columns. Alliteration. It’s all about alliteration.
Self-isolation: Voluntarily putting oneself through an unknowable number of days of isolation for a few reasons. First, because Gov. Gavin Newsom, always on the lookout for my safety, has strongly suggested that I, and others of my demographic (a word that generally includes age), stay at home, and, secondly, I thought it would be fun and relaxing to spend a couple of weeks at home with a pile of dogs and a stack of books. Once again, Gov. Newsom was right, and I was wrong.
Shelter-in-place order: It’s an order for people to stay in their homes in order to slow or stop the spread of COVID-19, usually with a few exceptions that include walking or biking or going to your grocery store or pharmacy. And, in Georgia, bowling alleys. People who work in critical, or “essential” businesses as well as health care workers and public safety personnel are generally exempted. And, in Georgia, the person who runs the bowling alley’s shoe-rental kiosk.
Tim Grobaty
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
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