Full Comment - How COVID’s ‘pandexicon’ changed the way we speak—and think

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00:00:23.620 midday quarantini still? These are words that we didn't use a couple of years ago. These are words

00:00:29.740 and phrases that were part of the lexicon of the pandemic, or as our next guest calls

00:00:37.240 it, the pandexicon. Before we get to our next guest on this, for a conversation that will

00:00:42.780 be funny and probably infuriating as we remember some of what we went through in COVID, I want

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00:01:04.680 Wayne Grady is someone who has written close to 30 books. And his latest one is a look at

00:01:11.000 how language changed during the pandemic. And what's fascinating is that I was part of that

00:01:19.100 changing language as a daily writer of what was happening in COVID and didn't always stop

00:01:25.160 to think about how it was changing, how we were using words that weren't there before, how we all

00:01:30.920 became experts in things that we'd never heard of before, using very scientific language. But Wayne

00:01:38.380 did. He documented it and put it in his new book, a collection of essays on the various words and

00:01:44.300 phrases that came to dominate our lives for three years. Wayne, thanks for the time today.

00:01:48.400 Well, thanks for having me. How did you come up with this concept of, well, language is changing,

00:01:55.740 I'm going to document it? Well, yeah, that's a really good question. Having written a few books

00:02:03.980 in the past about topics that were constantly changing, like global warming, for example,

00:02:11.040 how do you write about something? How do you write about a moving target in a way that when the book

00:02:15.600 comes out, it's not going to be automatically out of date? And I hit on the idea of the writing about

00:02:21.860 the words that we use, because they are things that weren't going to change. When we talk about

00:02:27.280 face masks in 2020, it meant the same thing that they meant that face masks meant in 2022 and 23 and

00:02:34.460 probably 2033. And so I decided to sort of pin the, sort of use the words, the lexicon of the

00:02:44.120 pandemic as sort of the structure, or the skeleton for the book, and then hang the essays on that. And

00:02:49.920 hopefully, hopefully, these words will be and well, my, my, my theory is that these words will still be

00:02:57.060 being used years and years down the road long after the pandemic is we hope over.

00:03:02.600 The first section of your book is about the before times. And that's a phrase that I still use.

00:03:07.940 Because often, I don't know about you, I'm going to guess it's the same, you're sitting there

00:03:12.800 trying to remember when something happened. Was that the beginning of the pandemic? Was that the

00:03:17.860 middle? No, no, that was in the before times. And tell me about that phrase, your thoughts on,

00:03:24.760 on the, that it's like a marking of an epoch.

00:03:29.940 Yeah, well, I think, you know, we try to, I tried to avoid paradigm shift in the book, but,

00:03:35.540 but that's really what it was. I mean,

00:03:37.660 one thing that the, that the pandemic did, I think, was to sort of fuse memory. So as you say,

00:03:45.320 it's very difficult to remember, you know, the last time, the last time I, we went to a movie,

00:03:51.880 was it, was it 2020? You know, was it 2021? Or was it 2019? It has been that long. And, you know,

00:04:00.200 it's, it's, it's always been difficult for me and for many people to actually pinpoint how many years

00:04:05.680 ago X happened. But I think the pandemic made it exacerbated that tendency because, because not

00:04:13.540 much happened. You know, I mean, we were, I mean, a lot, a lot happened around us, but we were, you

00:04:19.820 know, sequestered in our, in our apartments or our houses. We didn't go out much. We didn't have

00:04:25.280 people over. We didn't go to parties. We didn't go to restaurants. I mean, most of us. And so time

00:04:31.840 sort of lagged and time sort of coalesced into, into, into an amorphous thing. And, you know, I

00:04:40.140 don't, you know, it's, it's, it's all we can really say is that was before COVID or it was, it was since

00:04:46.040 COVID. So like that, you know, the before times we can pretty much identify, but, but whether something

00:04:53.060 happened in year one of COVID, year two of COVID, I find, I find it very difficult now to remember, I did

00:04:58.380 start making notes about things. And that, in, in a way, the book, when you, when I arranged the words in

00:05:05.020 the book into an order, I found myself arranging them chronologically. And that, and that sort of, as you

00:05:12.060 say, it starts with the before times, it starts with the, with the phrases that we began to use early

00:05:16.780 on in the pandemic. And that, in that way, when you go back and read the book, it does read like a history

00:05:22.880 of the, of the pandemic, the pandemic up until now. But I didn't really write it in, intend it that

00:05:29.840 way when I was writing it. I just was writing essays about those specific words and phrases.

00:05:35.040 Yeah, it's, it's a history of the pandemic through language. Now you start off by telling the story of

00:05:41.960 where you and your wife were when the before times ended. So tell me that you were, you were in Mexico,

00:05:50.160 were you just on a vacation or snowbirds? We're snowbirds, I guess, although that, to me,

00:05:56.360 that word always means Florida. But we, we, we've been going to Mexico now for 12 years,

00:06:03.560 for six months a year, for the summer, for the winter months. My, my wife has, Marilyn has severe

00:06:10.860 asthma. And here in Ontario at the, at the downwind end of the Great Lakes, it gets very humid and damp

00:06:19.220 in the winter and, and very difficult for her to breathe. So we go, we, we go to Mexico, we go to

00:06:24.920 a place called San Miguel de Allende, which is up in the mountains, very high and dry. Temperature is

00:06:30.860 25 degrees Celsius every single day of the year. And, but very dry. So it's great for someone with

00:06:37.260 asthma. So that's where we were in, and we can, we, we go in October or November and come back in

00:06:44.120 April or May. And that in 2020, we began to notice that, that, you know, things were heating up in

00:06:54.520 terms of the, of COVID. It had been declared a pandemic early March and borders were beginning

00:07:02.520 to be closed. People, people, airlines were saying you had to get PCR tests and, and before you could

00:07:11.660 enter the country, before you could get on the airplanes. And we thought, and also Air Canada

00:07:16.100 announced that in the following on the, I think it was on the 18th or something like that, Air Canada

00:07:21.520 announced that a week from then they would stop running daily flights from Mexico City to Toronto

00:07:26.220 and reduce them to, to, to, to, to weekly flights. And we realized that if that, when that happened,

00:07:32.600 we would probably not get out of Mexico for a long time because there were so many people 0.90

00:07:36.840 booked, trying to book their way back. So we, we booked a flight on the, on the 20th of March and

00:07:43.460 got back into, into Canada. And there were people not wearing masks on the plane. There were people

00:07:51.540 wearing masks. There were very few people. We landed in the airport in Toronto at the same time as a

00:07:57.780 flight from New York City and almost no one in the, in the immigration section of the airport were

00:08:05.940 wearing masks. And that didn't really dawn on us at the time that that was unusual. That was going to

00:08:12.060 be unusual. Those were still the days when they were telling us not to wear masks. There's no need to

00:08:19.000 wear masks. Yeah. They were still saying don't wear masks unless you're showing symptoms of having,

00:08:23.500 having COVID. You don't, don't stay home unless you're showing symptoms. I think when we landed

00:08:30.360 on March 20th, I think there had been 200 deaths in Canada at that time from COVID. And we thought

00:08:37.440 that was a lot. I mean, it was a lot. And, but we hadn't, and we had no idea how much worse it was going

00:08:44.240 to get. Uh, the borders, we weren't quarantined at the border. Nobody was being quarantined at that

00:08:49.840 point, but, uh, you know. See, you're, you're already using words that, that we just didn't use

00:08:56.820 before. Yeah. Quarantine was around, but when was the last time we had quarantine orders in Canada?

00:09:03.160 I know, I know. And, and, and we had to, we had to reacquaint ourselves with what this very ancient

00:09:09.700 term meant and why we did it. That's right. I, I, I, one of the things I did in each,

00:09:15.440 with each word is look up where the word came from. Quarantine came from, uh, from Italy in the,

00:09:21.560 I think the 15th century when, uh, the, the plague was in Europe and, uh, ships coming from the East

00:09:29.080 where they thought, everyone thought the plague was coming from. When ships arrived at a port in Italy,

00:09:34.020 uh, they had to, um, spend a month or four weeks on a, uh, on a four weeks, 40 days on an island off

00:09:42.740 the coast before the, before anyone from the ship was allowed to, to, to go into the port in Italy.

00:09:47.880 And those four, uh, 40 days were called, were called the quarantine. And that's where that phrase

00:09:53.680 came from. Um, we know it's no longer 40 days. It's now, you know, in, it was, I forget how long

00:10:00.700 it was in Canada. In, in France, it was two weeks and they, they called it the quarantine in, in French,

00:10:06.780 the 14 rather than the 40. Um, but yeah, we have never used it. Yeah. Ours was 14 days and, you know,

00:10:15.920 who, who went away on a trip and thought about, well, when I come back from Mexico, Florida,

00:10:22.520 California, Arizona, I'm going to have to quarantine. Yeah. And then that just became a part of everyday

00:10:29.060 language. Yeah. Yeah. We're not using it anymore. And I'm happy about that. No. For a while it was

00:10:35.220 daily use. Yeah. Yeah. It was a daily concern. Uh, that's part of my, part of my, uh, the reason I

00:10:42.640 wrote the book is that, uh, the way I did is that I think that once that when words enter the language

00:10:48.560 permanently like that, it's because the, the, the, the event has entered our lives permanently. So I think

00:10:55.160 that, that, that we are going to be, uh, the pandemic and COVID-19 are going to have, uh, be

00:11:01.360 affecting our lives for a long time to come long after, you know, people are not, um, people are no

00:11:08.240 longer, it's not, it's no longer a, a, a worldwide pandemic. Um, it's probably not a pandemic now. I

00:11:16.700 think the pandemic has officially been declared over, but people are still dying from it. Uh, the long-term

00:11:22.400 effects, the social, the social effects, the political effects, the economic effects, and

00:11:27.960 the psychological effects are going to be with us for a very long time.

00:11:31.960 One of the other phrases that you used in describing you and your wife coming back from

00:11:36.260 Mexico was PCR test, which stands for, uh, polymerase chain reaction test. Right.

00:11:43.540 That's one of those phrases that, um, we didn't use before. It's very scientific, but we all

00:11:50.940 became experts. Yeah. We all became experts in these scientific phrases. I, I covered both SARS

00:11:56.800 and, uh, swine flu. Um, when that went through, that would have been what 2009, I think one of my

00:12:06.080 kids was quite ill with, with swine flu. We never, we didn't react in the same way. We didn't have

00:12:11.940 all of these terms like zoonotic. Right. Um, and yet zoonotic would apply to both SARS and swine flu,

00:12:18.740 but we weren't using it. Um, so, so talk, talk to me a bit about that, about how these, uh, very

00:12:26.520 scientific phrases entered our language. Well, yeah, scientific and psychological, like, which I

00:12:32.760 guess is the same thing, but yeah, PCR tests. I mean, most of us now refer to PCR without really

00:12:40.560 actually, I mean, I had to stop for a minute to think, to remember what PCR stood for. I'm glad you

00:12:45.320 reminded me, but, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a test that takes a, takes a swab from, from

00:12:50.920 the, uh, from, from a nasal swab. And if there's even a small amount of, of the, of the virus, of the

00:12:56.820 coronavirus, which is another scientific term we didn't use before, uh, in, and, and magnifies it to

00:13:03.640 such an extent that it, it shows up in, in, in the, uh, in later in the test. Uh, it's, it, you know,

00:13:11.160 we, and even that was superseded by the rapid, rapid antigen tests that we, that we, that you

00:13:16.140 could get at the drugstore the government was handing out. Everybody takes, um, I used to call

00:13:20.840 them rat tests and, uh, big R-A-T random, sorry, rapid antigen tests. The word antigen, you know,

00:13:28.560 we all know, we all know what an antigen is and we all know what antibodies are. We all, so I think

00:13:33.700 many of us walk around wondering how many antibodies we have floating around in our, in our, in our

00:13:39.980 systems, uh, and hoping it's a lot. Um, yeah, the science, the science, science, and, and, and also,

00:13:47.440 um, um, psychological terms like self-isolation, uh, for, for many, many years, psychologists have

00:13:55.320 been saying that self-isolation is not a good thing. Uh, it, it can lead to depression, it can lead to,

00:14:01.620 to various psychological disorders or be a, or be a symptom of psychological disorders. And suddenly

00:14:07.860 the government was telling us we must self-isolate. And so we're so, well, what's, what's that going

00:14:15.080 to, and there were a lot of people writing about what, what's that going to mean socially for us

00:14:19.480 when the pandemic is over after having self-isolated for three, two or three years. Uh, I think we're

00:14:24.800 still figuring that part out. Yeah. And it's going to take a while to, for the, for those symptoms to,

00:14:29.940 to, for, for those effects to show they have been studying the effects of previous, uh, episodes

00:14:35.700 of self-isolation. For example, uh, during the ice storm here in, uh, Ontario and Quebec in 1989,

00:14:42.480 I think it was, uh, when people were 99, I was 99. Yeah. That's when I moved there.

00:14:49.680 Good timing. Uh, when people, uh, were isolated in their homes for, for weeks and then, uh, because of

00:14:56.840 the ice storm until they were, uh, released, um, the long-term cycle, the long-term psychological

00:15:03.180 effects from that have been studied. And, and, and, and people were wondering whether those studies

00:15:08.840 would apply to, uh, the long-term effects of COVID. Uh, and, you know, something like 10% of the people

00:15:16.180 who experienced those, that isolation ended up with, uh, serious psychological, um, problems that,

00:15:24.360 uh, persisted after, after the, uh, after the event was over. It'll, it'll be a long time before we

00:15:31.560 understand how, how severe those, those, uh, those effects have been. I, I write about that in the

00:15:38.000 last chapter of the book, which is after times. Um, but the, the outlook is, is that for many,

00:15:44.800 many people there, we're going to be, uh, you know, being affected by the things that happened to us

00:15:53.540 during the pandemic. I mean, and it makes sense, right? I mean, it's, I think it's, I think it's as big,

00:15:58.800 uh, uh, uh, an event in, in our lives as, uh, well, I would say even World War II for many of us.

00:16:05.860 Um, certainly as big as 9-11, for example, the way 9-11 has entered the language, I don't have to

00:16:10.920 explain what I mean by 9-11, uh, anymore. And so I don't think I need to explain what I mean by COVID.

00:16:17.500 Uh, I think I'll never, I'll never think of a face mask as something I wear when I'm playing hockey

00:16:23.880 anymore. Yeah. I, I, so at the beginning of the book, you, you write about how, um, these past

00:16:33.480 events and you're describing other past events, uh, like 9-11, um, or the ice storm, but also in the

00:16:40.860 book, you talk about different wars or you just mentioned quarantine. Um, and that these big

00:16:47.560 events gave us words that stayed in the lexicon. Do you think that we'll be using variant in the

00:16:55.520 same way? I mean, variant can have many meanings, but you know, from all the words that you looked

00:17:01.380 at, is there anything that is going to stick with us? Um, well, as I, I think face mask will stick with

00:17:09.860 this. Uh, I, I never really thought about face mask before the pandemic. Uh, in, you know, I mean,

00:17:16.020 I, there were something that you see, if you watch doctor shows on television, you see them wearing

00:17:20.640 those, those, uh, surgical masks. Uh, and, you know, uh, and a lot of people still think, uh, during

00:17:28.360 the pandemic that those surgical masks were effective against, against COVID, uh, and, and cloth masks.

00:17:36.240 Uh, yeah, I think, I think the term words, words like face mask, hand washing. I mean, now I, I don't

00:17:42.620 know about most people, but I, I find myself washing my hands more often and more consciously

00:17:47.500 than I did before. Um, I don't actually hum the words to happy birthday as I'm washing my hands to

00:17:53.860 time myself to see how long, but I do, I, I, you know, I do look at my hands and say, oh, I better

00:17:59.440 wash my hands. And I, I didn't do that quite so often before. Um, public, public health would have

00:18:06.140 told you to, um, they would have told all of us to, but we, we just didn't do it with the same

00:18:11.100 rigor as we did. Yeah. Especially in those early days of the pandemic. Yeah. Well, we did in, I guess

00:18:17.040 we did in hospitals, um, um, that the hand sanitizer, I think, you know, seeing those is going to bring

00:18:23.380 back, seeing those little jars of hand sanitizer are going to bring back a lot of memories. Uh, a couple of

00:18:28.580 days ago, I was rooting through a jacket I hadn't worn for a couple of, a couple of years. And I

00:18:32.360 found, I found a, uh, white, uh, N95 face mask in, in the pocket. And I, I, you know, I only wear,

00:18:40.120 I, we ordered a whole bunch of black N95 masks a while ago. And so for the last couple of last year

00:18:46.080 or so, I've only worn black face masks. And so I pulled out this white one and it suddenly,

00:18:50.880 when did I wear white face masks? Oh yeah, it was back in 2021 or something like that. Um, so there,

00:18:57.560 there's a lot of social distancing, I think is going to be with us for a long time as

00:19:02.600 a phrase. Um, and, and I think people are, you know, somebody said to me the other day

00:19:09.140 that when they, when they, when they go into, when they look into it, want to go to a restaurant

00:19:13.380 and they look into the, through the door of the restaurant, if it's too crowded and nobody's

00:19:17.180 wearing face masks, they say, no, it's too COVID-y. Uh, I'm not going in there. Uh, nobody's

00:19:22.220 social distancing. And I don't, I think, you know, five years ago, if I said we, we, we should

00:19:26.440 be social distancing. No one would have any idea what I was talking about, but I think

00:19:30.980 everyone does now.

00:19:32.420 It was a phrase that we invented, um, for the pandemic. It, uh, and then, you know, we

00:19:38.360 had to have experts explain it to us and, and, and, and then have it repeated ad nauseum,

00:19:44.180 um, um, for us to figure it out. Yeah. Do you think that there was, um, an attempt by,

00:19:53.700 uh, people, I mean, you write about, uh, government's role in all of this. You write

00:19:58.140 about anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers. Do you think that either side or any side or anybody

00:20:04.960 involved in this, were people using language, um, in being manipulative ways, uh, for good

00:20:12.840 or for bad, were they using it to try and, um, instill fear or, or, or changing the language

00:20:21.340 to make us act in certain ways? Was that part of what was happening during COVID?

00:20:25.840 I think so. I think there was a real divide. Well, you mentioned anti, anti-maskers and

00:20:30.340 anti-vaxxers. I think there, well, I know there was a real divide between people who, you

00:20:36.080 know, wore masks or, or got the vaccine when, when they became available available and people

00:20:41.300 who, who refused to do so. Uh, and, and there was a lot of pressure on, on, on various, on

00:20:48.500 both sides to conform to what, to what those, what those people believed. Um, and so, you

00:20:55.200 know, the, the term anti-vaxxer is essentially a negative term. Um, it's, it's, it's something

00:21:02.420 that a person who is vaccinated would say about a person who won't get vaccinated. Oh, you're

00:21:07.800 an anti-vaxxer. Well, it's been hurled at me and I've been vaccinated. Yeah. But part

00:21:14.860 of my job as a journalist is to question governments. I cover politicians and, and, and so anytime

00:21:21.760 that I would question, um, okay, well these, we've got these restrictions or these regulations,

00:21:27.960 are they still necessary? Someone would say, well, you're an anti-vaxxer. Right. Yeah. For

00:21:33.700 the, let's see, that's, they're using, they're using the language to sort of put you in a box

00:21:37.640 and, and dismiss your concerns because that you're, you're identified as, as someone who's

00:21:43.160 little on, you know, a little, uh, unreasonable about, about the things that are necessary to

00:21:48.260 do to, uh, thing. The, the term anti-vaxxer, as I write in the book comes, is a sort of a

00:21:53.500 holdover from the anti-measle vaccine movement that took place back, it was beginning in 2007.

00:22:00.520 I don't know if you remember, but, but. Oh, I do. There was a woman who wrote a book about

00:22:05.820 raising an autistic child and she had refused to have that, she had connected his measles vaccine 0.89

00:22:13.960 with his autism on, on Oprah. And immediately there was this law, this huge, uh, there had been, uh,

00:22:22.240 an article published in the, I think the. It was the Lancet. In the Lancet. Yeah. Uh, which had,

00:22:28.240 which was refuted in the next issue of the Lancet and withdrawn. It was the only time the land,

00:22:32.740 the first time anyway, that the Lancet had actually, uh, withdrew an article from, from that

00:22:38.100 they had published before, because there was no scientific evidence for the, for the claim

00:22:41.760 that, uh, the vaccine for measles, mumps and, and, uh, MMR or whatever. Yeah. Rubella, uh,

00:22:50.680 was linked to increased risks of, uh, autism in children. That was never proven. It's not, it is,

00:22:57.860 in fact, it has been disproven that that such is the case, but once it got on Oprah and got out there,

00:23:03.380 uh, it became, uh, a huge movement and, and people were anti-vaxxers in those days were, were the people

00:23:10.440 who wouldn't have their children vaccinated against measles. So we just picked that phrase up.

00:23:14.720 Um, we need to take a break, but when we come back, let's talk more about the, the use of

00:23:19.780 language, weaponization of language by, uh, people for various causes. When we come back.

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00:23:54.780 Conditions apply. Speaking about the way that language has changed, the way that

00:23:59.440 COVID impacted the way we use English, uh, when I want to just dive a bit deeper on some of these

00:24:08.260 terms, weaponization of, uh, of terms, um, anti-vaxxer, anti-masker. We've discussed those

00:24:15.200 were used to dismiss people. Um, issues like lockdown though, that if, if, if I told you

00:24:25.220 before COVID that we were going to lock you down, that would sound horrible. And yet it became what

00:24:32.100 people demanded. I mean, that, to me, that is a, a big change, I guess, in how we interpret language.

00:24:38.820 Well, lockdown is one of those terms that we borrowed from the military, uh, or the paramilitary.

00:24:43.880 And, uh, it, it, it's a prison term. It's what they do in prisons. When there's a riot,

00:24:48.280 they lock down a certain section of the, of the prison to prevent, uh, information from getting out

00:24:56.100 or getting in, uh, and, or weapons from getting out or getting in. And it's a, it's a negative term.

00:25:02.340 It's something that we should, when we hear there's been a lockdown and I live in Kingston,

00:25:06.720 there are 19 federal and provincial prisons in the Kingston, Ontario neighborhood. I know what a

00:25:12.100 lockdown means. And, uh, it's, it's not, it's never good. It means that there's trouble in one of the

00:25:17.560 prisons. And, uh, uh, so it's, it's a term that has sort of already has a negative connotation.

00:25:24.980 And when we, when we, and one of the biggest uses of it was in China where they, they locked down

00:25:32.700 the entire country for almost two years. And, and, and so when, when we were, you know,

00:25:38.140 when we were told to stay home, we, uh, you know, to self-isolate or to, to, uh, to not go to work

00:25:44.420 and not go to restaurants and theaters and et cetera, we referred to that as a lockdown as if it

00:25:50.420 was a huge imposition that we really, you know, was really going to be terrible thing to have to

00:25:56.140 go through when in fact, you know, it, it wasn't, it was just, it was a reasonable thing to, to ask

00:26:01.480 someone to do. There's a respiratory illness out there that's killing, uh, millions of people. 0.73

00:26:06.680 Maybe it's a good idea to avoid going places where you might catch it. Uh, that's what,

00:26:11.620 that's all that lockdown meant. And, uh, and in fact, the way the government expressed it,

00:26:16.420 it was in Canada anyway, and in, in the West, most Western countries, it was never a direct order.

00:26:22.280 You must lock down. It was, you know, stay home if you can, or try to avoid, uh, contact with other

00:26:29.180 people if it's convenient. Uh, it was never, it was never, uh, as, as I recall, it was never a strict

00:26:35.200 order. Uh, it, it, it depended on where you live, both in Canada and in the world. At one point,

00:26:41.700 Quebec did invoke a curfew, uh, and they were arresting people who were outside.

00:26:46.420 Right. At, at certain times of, uh, of the day. Yeah. And they were closing restaurants and,

00:26:51.160 and, and, and, and, uh, in parts of, uh, of Canada, the, uh, the restrictions were stronger

00:26:58.720 in, in parts of the United States at times, they were stronger than what we had. It all,

00:27:03.160 it did vary. None were, as you say, as serious as China, where, um, if you've seen the video,

00:27:09.600 they were literally welding doors shut to keep people inside. Yeah. We didn't go that far,

00:27:14.720 but it, it, it was, it was a big change. But as I said, lockdown is something that, um,

00:27:20.920 if I had said, Wayne, we're going to lock you down, you would have said, Oh, wait a minute.

00:27:25.480 Yeah. But there were many people that wanted more restrictions. It, that, that's,

00:27:30.780 that there was a big psychological change in how you viewed a word or a phrase that a year earlier,

00:27:38.860 you would have thought there's no way I want the government to do that. Then there was a large

00:27:44.320 part of the population that wanted that. They want more security from a more sense of security

00:27:49.480 coming from more direction coming from the government. One of the, one of the, uh, you know,

00:27:54.240 one of the, one of the ways that, that all the governments worked, uh, during the, during the

00:27:59.920 pandemic was to have lockdowns or have severe restrictions for a while, and then let open things

00:28:06.420 up. So let the economy recover a little bit. And then when, when the numbers started going up in

00:28:11.500 the hospitals again, to shut down restaurants and sports arenas and beaches and parks and things.

00:28:17.580 And then when people started complaining about too, being too many restrictions, they would open those

00:28:22.980 up and then the numbers would start to climb, climb again. And there were people who said, look,

00:28:27.880 this is, this is not working. It's, it's, this is not, this is not dealing with the,

00:28:31.840 with the epidemic. We are, uh, we should stay one way or the other, either like Sweden, for example, 0.96

00:28:39.820 stayed, they didn't have any lockdowns. They didn't shut anything down. They just,

00:28:43.400 they just let people go the way they shut down the borders, I think at some point, but they didn't,

00:28:49.020 they didn't close restaurants or, uh, or have, have personal lockdowns. Uh, the two, and that was,

00:28:56.360 that got into the whole idea. Another phrase that, that is in the book is herd immunity,

00:29:00.300 uh, where Sweden's approach was to let the, let the COVID-19 sort of run through the population,

00:29:07.540 get as many people to get it as possible, because once you, they thought once you get it,

00:29:12.760 you have, uh, an immunity to getting it again, uh, uh, which turned out to not be the case.

00:29:19.200 Uh, and, uh, so there were, there were people who thought Sweden had the, was, had the right way to

00:29:25.420 go. There are other people thought that China had the, had the right way to go. There was a movement

00:29:29.600 called zero COVID, uh, in which they, you know, in some places in, in Eastern, Eastern Canada and in

00:29:36.300 Northwest territories, they just shut everything down. Don't let anybody in, don't let anybody out.

00:29:41.760 Uh, and, uh, let's just brace ourselves for, for a bad few months and, and, and let this thing work

00:29:48.740 itself out. Uh, no, no single approach worked very well. China, China's lockdown severe, and Australia's

00:29:56.360 was another country and New Zealand was another country. Uh, they had the lockdown for quite a

00:30:02.100 while, uh, two years in China. And then, um, and then unusual for China, uh, there were, there was a

00:30:10.800 public outcry. There were, there were demonstrations in the streets to, uh, to lift the lockdown. Uh,

00:30:16.960 China gave in and they did lift the lockdown and then COVID got in and just, you know, a million and

00:30:22.940 a half people died in the next three months. You, um, you, you, you're right that in, in Canada and

00:30:30.280 many parts of the United States, we went up in town. Yeah. Um, and, uh, and then, and this is one of the

00:30:36.900 phrases, one of the phrases that you use in the book, we, uh, we had to apply an emergency break,

00:30:42.280 but you say that wasn't a very good term to use. Well, it was Ontario Premier Doug Ford used it

00:30:48.480 to describe what it was going to do. And, um, now I'm going by memory. I think that was April,

00:30:54.320 2021. And, uh, April, March, April. Yeah. And you said not a good term. Why not?

00:31:02.160 Well, for one thing, you, you only put them in your car, you only put your emergency break on

00:31:08.320 when the car is already stopped. Doug Ford used that term to say he's going to apply the emergency

00:31:15.800 break in order to stop the spread of COVID. Uh, after having left things open for so long that,

00:31:21.340 that COVID had, you know, had run rampant through the, through the province, he suddenly said, I'm

00:31:26.720 going to put on the emergency break and, and impose restrictions on, on everything imaginable where

00:31:33.580 people might, might, uh, uh, catch COVID. But using the word emergency is already, uh, you know,

00:31:42.000 a flag that makes people feel nervous. I mean, uh, if, how did things become an emergency or why are

00:31:50.360 things an emergency now when they weren't an emergency two years ago? Um, and I, so I, I think

00:31:55.860 that, and, and also the other thing that with that particular incident, Ford, uh, empowered the police

00:32:02.480 to stop people on the streets and in the, to stop cars on the highway and ask them if, if they're,

00:32:07.480 if what, where they were going was an essential, uh, trip. Uh, and that started making a lot of

00:32:15.780 people think that this was getting a little too right wing. And, uh, so I covered that extensively.

00:32:22.080 And what fascinated me about that is they, there was a group of people who were, uh, supporters of,

00:32:27.960 uh, COVID zero who wanted the type of lockdowns that we had in Melbourne. Right. And in Melbourne,

00:32:34.960 that included arresting you if you went too far from your home. Yeah. And when Ford brought it in,

00:32:41.020 I thought that was ridiculous and he shouldn't be doing it, but the people screaming the loudest

00:32:46.100 were the ones who had been calling for the Melbourne lockdowns. COVID was not good to a

00:32:50.360 lot of us psychologically. I know it's, it, it, it affected us so many, so many of us in ways that

00:32:57.280 were not logical. Uh, and, and I think that is the kind of thing that's going to, is going to stay

00:33:02.940 with us. It was when they, when they did that study on the ice storm that I mentioned earlier

00:33:08.240 in, in Montreal and, and, and well, here in Kingston, they, they found that what the hardest

00:33:13.980 thing on, on people psychologically was the uncertainty of when it was going to be over.

00:33:20.280 And I think with COVID it's, it's the same kind of thing. We did not, we, we had no way of being

00:33:26.400 certain or knowing in any way, how long this was going to last, how long the lockdowns were going

00:33:31.740 to last, how long we were going to be allowed to go to restaurants. Uh, and the uncertainty, the

00:33:37.220 long, the long-term effect of the uncertainty, I think is, is, is, is what is going to be with us

00:33:42.900 for a long time. In fact, that whole, that, that, that word uncertainty, I should have put that in the

00:33:47.980 book because that's a phrase that came up over and over again with people talking about the negative

00:33:52.520 effects of the, of the pandemic. Uh, but you were, we were talking earlier about, about how we use

00:33:58.360 negative language to, to, to talk about the pandemic or how the language that we used, this,

00:34:03.980 uh, um, uh, showed that we had a negative attitude towards, towards the, uh, towards what was

00:34:10.200 happening and using words like, uh, one of the phrases I have in the book is the, is vaccine

00:34:15.460 apartheid. Uh, and that, that, that's the one that I was just about to, to ask you about. You,

00:34:21.040 you've got seven different, um, instances where you use vaccines, including vaccines, vaccine,

00:34:26.480 vaccine, shedding, vaccine, passport, vaccine, nationalism, vaccine, hunters, vaccine, diplomacy,

00:34:32.040 vaccine apartheid is actually extremely offensive to me. I, I, I hate that term, but it was used.

00:34:41.600 Well, and it was used and I think people wanted people using it, wanted you to hate that term

00:34:47.660 because they wanted to lift the vaccine apartheid. It was actually someone from the, the prime minister

00:34:54.380 of South Africa that used that first use that term in a speech, uh, to the world health organization

00:35:00.340 saying that it was the way that the vaccine was being distributed around the world amounted to

00:35:06.600 vaccine apartheid because certain countries, certain countries that were not in Africa were getting,

00:35:12.080 uh, the, the lion's share of the available vaccine doses were, uh, North America was 80,

00:35:18.880 60 to 70% vaccinated, fully vaccinated. That time Europe was, uh, 70 to 80% vaccinated, whereas

00:35:26.260 countries in Africa were 10% or five between five and 10% vaccinated. And, and because the North, 0.82

00:35:33.460 because the rich countries were hoarding doses of, of vaccine and poor countries were not getting

00:35:39.060 there enough to give the, to protect their citizens. And, and, uh, the, the president of South

00:35:44.460 Africa said, this amounts to vaccine apartheid and the WHO, the leader of the WHO agreed with him.

00:35:50.740 He said this, we're not talking about, about, uh, leading to vaccine, a situation of vaccine

00:35:57.080 apartheid. We're, we are actually in a situation of vaccine apartheid. Um, and so that led to a whole 0.54

00:36:04.260 discussion about one of your other terms, patent waiver. And, and, and suddenly people went from being

00:36:09.800 experts in, um, in infectious diseases to, uh, intellectual property law. I know, I know. And

00:36:17.820 as a member of the Canadian writers union, I've been dealing with copyright issues for years. So

00:36:24.200 I had a bit of an idea of what was going on there and, and the resistance to opening up copyright.

00:36:29.320 Uh, yeah. So patent waiver. Uh, and if, if I do a second version of this book or, or, uh, another,

00:36:36.720 another, uh, revision of it, I'm going to have to add to the patent waiver entry. Patent waiver was

00:36:44.360 when, uh, poor countries like India, uh, um, South Africa, many African countries, uh, asked

00:36:52.120 the owners of the copyrights of the vaccines, the companies like Pfizer and Moderna to,

00:36:59.320 allow the, allow the manufacturers in those poor countries to manufacture their vaccines

00:37:05.420 in the, in those countries, rather than those countries having to buy the vaccine from, from

00:37:10.820 the corporations or the pharmaceutical companies in the rich countries, they couldn't afford

00:37:15.520 it. Uh, and, and so there was a, there was a, uh, a movement, a request to the WHO to actually

00:37:23.720 force those companies to release their patents. Um, and the WHO and the World Trade Organization,

00:37:31.740 the WTO, uh, had, had their hands were tied, they said, because many countries had signed,

00:37:38.120 uh, a treaty saying that they would, they would honor, recognize the copyright of other countries,

00:37:44.960 member countries of the WTO. And so they couldn't order somebody to, to release the patent, but the,

00:37:51.280 it was a humanitarian request. The companies on the pharmaceutical companies on their own

00:37:56.220 were asked to release and they wouldn't do it and they still haven't done it. Even though, uh,

00:38:01.160 since the book came out, the WT, the WHO has, uh, has required, requested the companies, uh, to release

00:38:10.340 their patents and companies have said they would, they still haven't. So it was legal for, it was okay

00:38:17.220 for a, for a country like China or India to manufacture, uh, um, a vaccine that was patented

00:38:25.920 in another country under license where they had to pay, pay the other, pay the pharmaceutical company

00:38:31.920 for that, for that right. But they, but they were never allowed to, to sort of just start making the

00:38:37.460 vaccine on their own without, without paying for it, uh, a lot for it. Have you, have you looked at

00:38:44.800 whether we've seen, um, such large scale language adaptation like this before COVID?

00:38:52.100 Well, I think World War II, I mentioned that earlier, you know, things that were invented during

00:38:57.300 World War II are, are now in the language. Um, ballpoint pens, for example, were invented by, uh,

00:39:05.040 the Air Force so that, uh, airline pilots could, or, or, yeah, airline, people in airplanes could,

00:39:11.480 could write, uh, on their charts. They only, they couldn't, you can't use a fountain pen at 30,000

00:39:18.340 feet, uh, if you're, and, and so they invented the ballpoint pen. Uh, the Jeep was invented during the

00:39:26.120 Second World War. Um, so lots of terms like that, uh, have entered the language. Spam. Spam, yeah, yeah.

00:39:34.480 Which has taken on a new meaning well beyond the luncheon meat. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so I think that's,

00:39:41.640 I think, yeah, that's the one that comes to mind to me most clearly. What, what about differences

00:39:47.580 between, um, either classes, you know, it, was there a class difference, uh, in how language changed or,

00:39:55.760 um, how does English differ from other languages in dealing with it? You, you mentioned earlier,

00:40:02.180 uh, the French had a different term. They didn't use quarantine. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. What about

00:40:10.220 those differences? Did you notice any of those? I looked at, uh, the book deals mainly with the

00:40:16.760 language, the English language, how it's changed because I don't, you know, I didn't have access

00:40:21.560 to a lot of other languages, but I did, I did read a study that said that Germany, Germany had come

00:40:27.460 up with 1500 new phrases to talk about the pandemic. Um, I don't know if they actually

00:40:33.560 came up with any new words. Um, you know, the German thing is to, is to take existing words

00:40:39.140 and bunch them together to, to mean something, to mean something else. Uh, I know that, uh,

00:40:44.620 in Holland, they came up, they started using a word, um, um, to, to describe this is called

00:40:53.000 in, it would be literally translated as hamstering. So I think it, and it meant, um, stocking up

00:41:00.040 on things that you think are going to be in short supply later on. So people would hamster

00:41:03.700 toilet paper, um, and people hamstered, uh, uh, batteries, flashlight batteries and things

00:41:11.060 like that. Um, hamstering, hamster. We called it hoarding. Yeah. Yeah. And I still, I still don't

00:41:17.100 understand the toilet paper hoarding at the beginning. I know it's the last thing I would,

00:41:21.220 I would have thought of. I did say that, you know, I, I would understand coffee or Earl gray tea

00:41:26.280 or something, but toilet paper, but you know, it, it, it does make sense in the long run because

00:41:32.660 when you look back, because think, you know, if you, when we were allowed into the supermarkets,

00:41:38.180 the, we talked to that, that one of the things that came up a lot was the, uh, the supply chain

00:41:43.680 shortages. Um, some of the, there's a phrase we didn't use, uh, outside of certain logistics

00:41:50.040 enterprises. We, you know, we didn't use supply chain in general language. No, no, not unless we

00:41:56.060 worked for a retail outlet or something like that. Uh, but yeah, everyone knows now you go into a

00:42:01.800 grocery store and there's no brown sugar. Uh, the grocery store guy will say, well, yeah, we have a

00:42:07.320 supply chain problem and you know what that means. Um, yeah. Uh, Susan Sontag wrote a, wrote a book

00:42:15.160 called illness as metaphor. And she, she talked about, uh, and that was about cancer. And she talked

00:42:20.820 in that book about how, when, when we started using military terms to, uh, to describe the effect of

00:42:28.020 cancer on society. So, you know, we have a, we fight, we have a battle against cancer. We, we have

00:42:33.820 drugs that target cancer. Uh, we, uh, you know, that, that kind of military phrasing. And we, we did use

00:42:42.680 the same kind of thing in, uh, with COVID, you know, the, the vaccines target or, or they, they act

00:42:48.640 like a bullet for, for, uh, for COVID and then using words like lockdown, um, again, military, sort of

00:42:55.760 military phraseology that, that, uh, to describe what we're doing with that, with, uh, to, to mitigate the

00:43:02.300 effects of the, of the disease. All right. The book is Pandexicon, how the language of the pandemic

00:43:08.180 defined our new cultural reality. Wayne, thanks for the time. We could keep chatting, but, uh, we both

00:43:14.100 have to get on with the day, but that, that was a fascinating look back. Um, some good memories,

00:43:19.640 some bad memories, some stuff I want to forget. Right. I think that's, that's, that sums it up

00:43:24.540 pretty well, Brian. Thanks. All right. Thanks for the time, Wayne. Uh, this, uh, is an episode of

00:43:30.180 Full Comment. Full Comment is a post-media podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:43:34.420 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive

00:43:40.380 producer. You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Amazon, whatever

00:43:45.840 device or app you're listening to, hit the subscribe button, leave us a review or a rating and tell your

00:43:51.880 friends all about us. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:44:00.180 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - August 21, 2023

How COVID’s ‘pandexicon’ changed the way we speak—and think

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