A Virus by Any Other Name: How to Address a Pandemic?
At the beginning of the year, reports emerged of the mysterious and contagious virus that struck the city of Wuhan first and would later give rise to a global pandemic.
Early on, one could be forgiven for thinking of it as a mainly Chinese affair: many of the English language news channels I followed framed it as such. Articles from the BBC and the Guardian, published in January, called it a “China virus”; the South China Morning Post referred to it as the “Wuhan pneumonia” and “Wuhan virus”; the New York Times and CNN, in late January, termed it the “Wuhan coronavirus”. This last name references the group of viruses it belongs to, “named for their crown-like spikes when viewed through a microscope”.
On 11 February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) named the virus COVID-19, adhering to a set of best practices announced in 2015. This recommends that disease names avoid referencing geographic locations (such as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome); people’s names; species or classes of animals; food; cultures, populations, industries or occupations; and terms that incite fear.
This guideline aims to minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people, a consideration which is important at the best of times, and even more so during times of pandemic: infectious diseases, perhaps more than other crises, have a propensity to divide us from one another.
Keeping us apart
One thinks first and foremost of the physical separation of people necessary to curb its spread: travel bans, social distancing measures, the official periods of lockdown and quarantine and so on. These keep us apart not just in space, but also in time: according to the Online Etymological Dictionary, “quarantine” comes from the latin quadraginta (“forty”) which referred to the 40-day period that the Venetians, in 1377, would order ships from plague-stricken countries to wait outside their port to ensure that no cases were aboard. The period, chosen more for its biblical connotations with purification rather than medical knowledge, may seem unbearably long to us who are used to our contemporary pace, though it at least promised a definite window, as opposed to the current cycles of lockdown and gradual release.
Within our physical barriers, a sense of isolation and division takes root more easily. Even when venturing outside, the face masks that we wear to protect ourselves and each other also veil our expressions; meanwhile, the very presence of other people in the street not only carries the threat of contagion, but also, in places like Singapore, the suspicion of vigilante surveillance. As Elizabeth Kolbert writes in the New Yorker:
“The neighbor you might, in better times, turn to for help becomes a possible source of infection. The rituals of daily life become opportunities for transmission; the authorities enforcing quarantine become agents of oppression. Time and time again throughout history, people have blamed outsiders for outbreaks.”
This sense of division is heightened by our tendency to moralise pestilence in an effort to give meaning to these traumatic events. Although outbreaks may appear discrete, the truth, as Adam Gopnik reminds us, is that they are merely episodes in a “constant, unending, and unpredictable warfare between human and bug, which takes place in a state of moral indifference, at least on the bug’s side.”
He continues:
“In the face of that unending and often frightening cycle, we seek not merely material cause but moral purpose — a price paid or a lesson learned from sickness. When bad things happen to good people, we seek a cause; when bad things happen to everyone, we seek a reason, and it had better be a very good reason, on a par with the pain that it inflicts.”
The result in history has often been that diseases heighten our prejudices, with a stark and relatively recent example being the HIV/AIDS epidemic that surfaced in the American consciousness in the early 80s. As many of those initially diagnosed were homosexual men or drug users, it was referred to as a “gay-related immunodeficiency”, a “gay cancer” or a “gay disease”. Such associations with marginalised groups disincentivised efforts to properly address the disease in America, and has created a stigma against sufferers that persists to this day.
Gopnik also points out how, in our need to pinpoint a reason for pandemics, there is a tendency to attribute their cause to shadowy enemies: Gopnik’s example is the Jews who were often blamed for outbreaks of the plague, and we can think of any number of current day conspiracies that aim to pin COVID-19’s origins onto particular corporate or national interests. In light of these human responses to infectious disease, the WHO’s guidelines on the way we refer to pandemics are not mere gestures towards political correctness, but a crucial part in redressing the tendency towards division and conflict that intensifies in such episodes.
Bringing communities together
At the same time, the current pandemic has also been an opportunity for communities to show their strengths: The Guardian, on May 22, ran an article compiling the good news for that week, pointing towards a return of community spirit through the “seed sharers, mask weavers, happy clappers, valiant volunteers, community choirs and online orchestras” that put their time, effort and ingenuity to altruistic ends. Similarly, the scientific community has shown an impressive spirit of collaboration, with experts in many countries conducting research and sharing results to on a scale never seen before. Taking an optimistic view of the pandemic, we can focus on how it pushes for positive economic and social reforms that, if maintained, could bring us towards a more equitable and sustainable future.
What also feels different about the current pandemic is our technological capability to stay connected online, whether through social media or video conferencing platforms. Although, as Kara Swisher, writes in the New York Times, “life’s true pleasures remain in the analogue world”, these digital means afford us some comfort through contacting our loved ones, and a promise of normalcy — however illusory — by bringing us our work and entertainment.
However, to fully leverage on technology’s capability to keep us together, as well as fulfil the promise of a world that emerges better than before, we need to be mindful of the language and rhetoric that we use when discussing the reality of infectious diseases. Perhaps the way that COVID-19 was initially termed led to complacency elsewhere, a feeling that it was an issue “over there” for “them” to handle, rather than all of us. Certainly, as China re-emerges into the headlines as its situation improves, the association between their country and the virus has taken an uglier turn in provocative statements made by US president Donald Trump.
Defending his use of the term “Chinese Virus” in March, Trump insisted that he only wanted to be “accurate” in pointing to its origins. But as we have seen, language has other effects than merely denoting facts: the documented spike in racist violence and harassment against Asian Americans in this period underscores this. How we collectively address the virus is a key step in how we understand it, and how we face it together.
Written by Thow Xin Wei
