Pandemic Phrase Guide

It's March 23rd and there's snow on the ground... People stayed inside for a week and it fixed global warming.

I should mention that the most relevant people in my life who are inside the vulnerable age group (Covid 19 is much more deadly to people 65 years and older) are all in fairly safe areas. I won't go into too much detail, but one set of grandparents is in a community that has taken all the correct measure to protect their residents and the other set lives in a very remote location.

This pandemic has popularized a few new phrases. Let's go over our new lingo:

Social Distancing: This means reducing the amount of time you spend outside, not attending social gatherings, and being two metres away from other people whenever you can. Not directly related to the phrase, but I think people would also think of washing their hands frequently and not touching your face when going outside when they hear this term.

The media is really trying to make this phrase sound cool, promoting #socialdistancing.

My executive director sent an email saying that he doesn't like this phrase, and would prefer the term "physical distancing" while practicing social connectedness, which can be safely done by phone, text, email, or video chat. It's true, I've been more aggressively social during the time that I've been physically distancing.

Social distancing is a very frightening term for us social workers.  I mean, it literally means distancing yourself from everything I do. These policies have in fact, put me out of work during the pandemic. I really hope that after this is over with, people remember that social distancing is only good during a pandemic. I don't want people to think it's good general practice, and to keep isolating themselves because the world is dangerous and germy even after we're through all this.

Self-Quarantine: This just means staying at home. A quarantine is when you block off a person or people's access to the outside world because they have an infection and you don't want them infecting others. A self-quarantine is when you do that to yourself. Doctors have been prescribing "self-quarantines" to people with Covid-19 who don't have severe symptoms, aren't in the vulnerable age category, and aren't immunocompromised (The term "immunocompromised" has also spiked in usage recently, it just means someone whose immune system can't safely fight off the symptoms). The reason people have to self-quarantine is because we don't have the resources to clinically quarantine everyone who shows symptoms.

Because you can be contagious for up to 14 days before developing symptoms, everyone is encouraged to self-quarantine if they can. Especially so if you have recently traveled or have been in the presence of a traveler.

Staying away from people because you're sick and you don't want to infect people is pretty common sense, but I never heard the phrase "self-quarantine" before all this blew up.

Flatten the Curve: If you look at one of those graphs with an X and a Y axis, one representing the passage of time, and one representing the number of infected cases, right now it looks like a giant curved line, because people keep getting infected at a frightening rate. By slowing the rate of infection, we can make that curve flatten over time.

It sucks because the intended outcome is to have us hiding in our homes for longer than if we all just got it over with, but if everyone is sick at once, society will shut down. And even if the virus isn't deadly to most people, society shutting down is deadly to everyone.

Here's an article that explains the concept better: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

Zoologic Spillover: This phrase isn't as popular yet, but I think it's rising. Apparently, they've found something very similar to Covid-19 in bats that live in Wuhan Province, China, where this virus originated. So the idea is that somehow, a person contracted it from a bat, and that's how things got started.

It isn't deadly to a bat, because they raise their body temperature as a way of burning energy. Being a flying mamal takes an immense amount of energy, so their body is built to handle those spikes in temperature. But for humans, we raise our body temperature to fight off infection, and so we are just much less suited to the symptoms.

That might not be entirely scientifically accurate, but I think the takeaway is that humans got it from bats, and it doesn't usually hurt a bat, and it usually does hurt a human.

A species contracting a condition from another species is called zoologic spillover. The article I read really emphasized that this is less the fault of the bats, and more the fault of humans. It's still thought that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market ("wet market" is another phrase that's being used more, it means a market where both livestalk and freshly slaughtered meat are present). I don't think they've pinpointed exactly how the bat virus spilled into humans, but the idea is that these wet markets contained a ton of animals in varying conditions that wouldn't normally interact, and bringing them all together like that is a recipe for disaster.

Apparently viruses spread through zoologic spillover isn't all that uncommon, but in the past, the virus would sort of naturally be contained within the community it originated in. But nowadays, humans just move around a ton, and this has led the infection to spread over the globe.

Hoarders and Panic Buying: Society has had a bit of an obsession with hoarders for a while, but up until now it's meant people with a living style of collecting items to an unhealthy extent, and being unable to part with their possessions because of a psychological condition. The Pandemic Hoarder is someone who hoards food and living supplies, usually because of panic buying. This is frowned on and stigmatized because when people do this, it means that other people aren't able to access those supplies. People who aren't capable of buying in bulk because of finances or transportation limits are often the same people who are more vulnerable to the infection, those being the elderly and the immunocompromised, so hoarders are seen as selfish people who prioritize their own well being over others. The phenomenon of panic buying is the reason that there are so many grocery limits put in  place at the time.

We had an influx of panic buying when the government told us to get two weeks of supplies and hide indoors. I've heard that the issue of hoarders and panic buying is overplayed, and that our grocery stores were simply not built to handle the goverment's request. Think about it, if the average person purchases a week's worth of supplies at a time, the store is going to stock for that level of demand. If all of a sudden, a week's worth of customers all appear in the store at once, and they all want to buy twice as much stuff, the store is going to be overwhelmed regardless of the presence of hoarders or panic buyers.

This makes sense, but I do believe there is some panic buying going around. A friend of mine had a package of toilet paper ripped out of his hands while he was shopping. The fact that certain items get attacked en mass also reflects panic buying.

This is a little personal, but sometimes I feel like the general population sort of shares a wavelength that I'm just not on, and that seems true now more than ever. I feel like everyone collectively thought "toilet paper" while I was thinking "beans and rice" and then a bit later, everyone thought "ground beef" while I thought "apples, onions, salt".

It probably wasn't ideal that everyone mobbed the grocery stores right when events of over 50 people were canceled and we were told to stay two metres away from people.

There have been some instances of people panic buying toilet paper and then selling it at an increased price. Vultures of the apocalypse.

Anyway, that's the end of my phrase guide. Probably none of my six readers needed it, since you can't get away from it nowadays.

One element of this event that I haven't really touched on here, is how this will effect the economy. I won't say it's the most frightening aspect of social distancing and self-quarantining, because if it was we wouldn't be doing it, but if our population's health and safety is our chief concern, our economy is probably the runner-up.

I'm not an economist, but recently a lot of people stopped making money, and a lot of people started spending a lot of money in very different ways than they normally would. It doesn't take much imagination to say that will have some kind of effect.

Record number of people have applied for Employment Insurance.

Something weird that everyone has noticed but nobody I've talked to seems to understand the reason for is, gas prices have dropped immensely. Is it just because of lower demand because less people are on the road?

Apparently major airlines are predicted to go bankrupt within a matter of weeks with the borders closed. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the major takeaways from this is a great reduction in international travel. Between commercial flying companies going bust and a general fear of international viruses, I could see tourism dropping and international flights being far more government controlled.

This could lead to a large decrease in fossil fuel emissions, which would at least be a silver lining. I was joking a bit about global warming ending because everyone stayed inside for a week, but it is true that this could lead to some environmental benefits.

A definite benefit of the pandemic is that my rate of blog updates has increased. I'm going at a pace to surpass my New Year Resolution of a minimum 40 updates for 2020. Lee-Anne pointed out that it is kind of cool that I'm keeping a record of events during a historic event, and that it's something I will likely reflect on in the future. Assuming we get to keep the Internet after this.