This month marks the beginning of my third year contributing columns for rabble.ca. Not surprisingly, all but one of these pieces has dealt with COVID and/or the dismal situation facing the Canadian healthcare system.
Many of the issues covered since February 2021 are topics I have described repeatedly over the years in other reporting. With the onset of COVID, however, the language of healthcare began to include new words and phrases that have since become part of the common lexicon. What are they?
Antinomic thinking: This is the ability to consider two different and opposing concepts at the same time. In COVID-speak, Canadians learned to take the advice of public health and politicians, which was often contradictory. And then, after repeated requests to pay attention to their dictates, Canadians were told to make our own decisions.
Similarly, we are now expected to understand the importance of vaccines, but also to accept that even keeping up-to-date on shots and boosters was – and still is – no guarantee against contracting COVID.
Flattening the curve: This was one of the most common objectives regarding COVID. It was also one of the most mis-understood. Flattening the curve, at least here in Canada, was not a strategy to eliminate COVID completely. It was a goal to keep hospitals functioning, helping them treat the huge influx of COVID patients, including those in ICUs.
It is difficult to remember the early days of COVID, before vaccines and effective treatments were available. Pictures of temporary hospital units in parking lots were not uncommon.
Unfortunately, flattening the curve was misinterpreted to mean getting rid of COVID altogether. These were the stated objectives in China and New Zealand, for example. Canadians should recall that these countries with zero-COVID goals developed restrictions that Canadians would likely not tolerate. Nor did they work.
Herd immunity: This is a real concept that applies to communicable diseases. Herd immunity relies on the immunity developed by people who are either vaccinated or who have developed immunity from contracting the disease, or both. Once a sufficiently large percentage of the population has developed immunity this way, the theory is that there is an insufficient percentage of the population left to contract the communicable disease. This can gradually lead to the disease dying out.
The real question about herd immunity, as with other communicable diseases, is that the science has not been able to predict accurately how much immunity develops from COVID vaccines and boosters and from the disease itself. Further, there is no certainty about how long the immunity to COVID lasts. In other words, Canadians cannot rely on herd immunity to protect themselves and others from COVID.
Pivot: No longer a word describing the axis of a rotating mechanism, COVID-speak made popular another definition.
Businesses pivoted from producing small-batch liquors to hand sanitizers. Restaurants pivoted to take-away food and then to outdoor dining.
Tens of thousands of employees pivoted from working on-site to working at home. Kitchen and dining tables pivoted to become desks and bedrooms pivoted to become home offices.
Pivoting showed how adaptable Canadians can be.
Trypanophobia: A real condition describing fear of needles. Trypanophobia prevented an estimated 15-25 per cent of Canadians from accepting COVID vaccines. Some who did overcome their fear fought panic attacks, sweats, headaches and stomach aches to accept shots.
It’s worth remembering that trypanophobia is not life-threatening. Contracting COVID, especially without vaccination, is.
Vaccine hesitancy: Vaccine hesitancy became the politically correct phrase to identify everyone who would not accept vaccines. These Canadians ranged from firm anti-vaxxers to trypanophobes to those with a medical condition precluding a vaccine.
Vaccine hesitancy was frequently accompanied by denial of all science related to COVID-19 and to refusal to accept all public health measures intended to reduce the risk of catching – and spreading – the virus. Many vaccine-hesitant people, nonetheless, believed in herd immunity. See above.
Canada’s COVID statistics shows that some 83 per cent of Canadians did have at least one shot and some 81 per cent had at least two. With an estimated total population of 38.9 million people as of July 2022, it appears that vaccine hesitants, from anti-vaxxers to trypanophobes, were greatly outnumbered.
Various “-emics”: WHO first declared COVID a global pandemic on March 11, 2000. With that announcement, COVID-speak seemed to use “pandemic,” “epidemic,” and “endemic” interchangeably. It’s not just language purists who insist that there is a difference in these “-emics” and this difference is very important.
An endemic disease is one that is always present in a region or group of people. Seasonal flu is a good example in both North America and Australia.
A pandemic occurs when a disease unexpectedly increases among a large population or region. An example is the resurgence of measles in North America, because many children are no longer vaccinated against this disease.
A pandemic spreads across multiple countries or continents. COVID-19 is a perfect example of this.
COVID began as a pandemic. The world-wide goal is not to eradicate it, but to bring it to the level of an endemic disease. One for which there are vaccines and treatments. As recently as March 3, 2023, WHO began the process to achieve this goal, beginning to negotiate a global agreement to protect the world from future pandemic emergencies.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
