I’m Going to Have to Stop You Right There, Mr. Epidemiologist
Pandemic words and thieving scientists
There’s a lot of correcting terminology in the media and social media these days, it’s something of an epidemic. Most of it should stop, because it’s silly, it won’t work, and it shouldn’t work. Let’s take one I’ve seen a lot of people having feelings about: the word endemic. Or rather, the at least four words, endemic. The question we’re asking is about our future, after this immediate crisis is over.
Will Covid become endemic? The short answer is probably yes, for most values of endemic. Right now, epidemiologists are reaching for their guns, but I’m not trying to tell them about their field, I’m telling them about the word they tried to steal. Words, guys, that’s my field.
I’m not against word stealing at all. We repurpose and steal and twist words all the time, that’s what makes language so rich and useful. But technical communities have a habit of not just honest stealing, but camping language — finding a word they like, and then sitting on it with a gun.
Technicians, scientists, etc., have a tendency to stake claim to an existing word and decide their definition is the only right one, because it is the least popular and requires the most work to understand. That tortured logic doesn’t make their definition invalid; the only score of whether a word or usage is valid is whether it successfully conveys meaning from the mind of one person to the mind of another. But many successful uses of terms drive specialists crazy because it’s not their usage, and many unsuccessful uses of terms drive readers/listeners crazy because they’re working hard understand, but the language isn’t meeting them halfway. They give up in a huff, and the technician mutters something about the media or education, hells and handbaskets.
Take the term “endemic” — an epidemiologist will tell you this word means a disease is at a steady state in a given population with an R number of 1. (This is not strictly speaking correct, it’s R₀ x S = 1 but I’m not explaining all of that, you can go look it up if you want.) But, here’s the difficulty — epidemiology as a word, and as a distinct field, arises in the 19th century. The word endemic is attested 200 years sooner, in the 1600s. Endemic, meaning roughly “in the people” in its Greek roots, is something that is just part of the population, or part of the place.
In this latter sense it is used in biology to describe species that live where they arose, like the various strange and lovely birds of New Zealand that absolutely do not live anywhere else. Still not quite what that first endemic means, but clearly another endemic, a term of art. If you count it, that’s two endemics so far.
We just all “celebrated” the anniversary of the WHO declaring Covid-19 a pandemic (another word doing a lot of work) much too late by many people’s angry stamping. But there was never any legal or technical status to that term, just a cultural one. The one that mattered within WHO’s framework, the one with some legal standing was Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
PHEIC, it just rolls off the tongue.
But it was WHO’s statement about the PHEIC which kicked off a whole suite of responses, research, and so on — a statement made on January 30, before most of the world was concerned about SARS-CoV-2 at all. In the next weeks they were putting out research roadmaps and sharing clinical information and crafting public messaging, all the things we want WHO to do in a pandemic, while avoiding a nebulous and highly emotional word as long as they could. WHO was trying to dodge a linguistic bullet, but couldn’t.
Under public pressure WHO basically said sure, this is a pandemic, on March 11th. It fit the definition, but changed nothing about the work health organizations were doing, including WHO, China CDC, US CDC, Europe CDC, and so on. It was psychologically important, and that had to be considered, but it didn’t change anything professionals were doing. Historically, pandemics are usually named more after the fact, much like World War I, the Renaissance, and the 1918 Flu pandemic. What constitutes a pandemic, and what that means, differs for different people.
I can understand WHO’s reluctance — they were there to deal with a disease, not dance with global culture, and they also had their own constituents to not piss off in the process. Even pandemic, a common word, easily defined and with a single distinct idea, is not so easy to manage in practice.
Endemic is much worse.
When we talk about something being just part of the lives of all people, of society, of the nature of something, endemic is a very good word to reach for — not only is that what the word means, it also conveys that whatever you are calling endemic is part of the fabric of the people, it’s not coming out.
Endemic is the perfect word to describe a disease that we’re just going to have with us from now on. Also, it seems connected to the words pandemic and epidemic, having the same sounds and music that they do, edging it into a third meaning. Not, though, because they are directly related. They are not. It’s natural to assume endemic is related to pandemic and epidemic, but both of those come later (into English) and were more directly about disease than endemic was.
Will Covid be endemic? Is flu endemic? Depends on which endemic you’re using. In the last 400 years of usage, absolutely. In the recent technical use of it in the field of epidemiology, probably not. This is the fourth meaning of the word, and it clashes with the first, perfectly apt and natural use of the word, as well as its later rhymings with plague. If you want a word that is distinct, make up a distinct word. Epidemiology itself is a great example — it’s highly technical, first used to describe the field it describes now. It’s got a unique sound, and its base parts describe it well and specifically. Virology, attested less than 100 years ago, is also fantastic.
Epidemiologists, if you wanted a word for a disease that spreads at a steady rate in a vulnerable population, you really shouldn’t have picked the word that means common or inherent to a people or place. The flu is every bit as endemic as pizza, beer, and teenage heartache are, and Covid is likely to become.
In general, specialists, you should stop correcting people who use “your” words wrong. That’s not how language works. If it was, literally would still be literally and I would not constantly being saying “That’s not what ‘begs the question’ means, damn it” and stomping off to get a drink.
If you’ve tried to jam a meaning into a term and it didn’t work, you need new nomenclature, not angry denunciations of the media or education or the stupid people out there getting your word wrong. If you want to keep it, ok — that’s also how language works — but you don’t get to take it away from anyone else. So, if you are a scientist or a doctor trying to talk about the future of Covid, make it clear that your endemic means R₀ x S = 1, but also answer the question of whether Covid is sticking around, something we have to learn to live with, something in (en) the people (dēmos).
All of this goes just as much, and maybe more, for technologists. You know what you did. Cookies? My god.
