Marc Legare is a philosopher and motorcycle adventurist.
He has travelled extensively, worked and lived in Australia, US, and across Canada.
He has a varied working career including: Firefighter, Lawyer, Navy, Motorcycle Importer, plus others.
He chose to return to southern Saskatchewan because of his family's deep roots here.
Giving an event, situation, or issue a name makes that something sound more profound and important. For example, The Great Depression, has a weighty meaning to it. The name itself puts a higher significance on it juxtaposed to the 1930's being mentioned simply as "difficult years." Formal names and labels evoke imagination and emotion.
The Great Depression was epic and worthy of its title. Does Coronavirus warrant the same? If it was simply called, "a virus," or "a bug," would we see it differently and would we be as reactionary to it?
Prior to our present-day "nightmare," we all heard the words "a virus is going around" spoken each year. There was nothing new, remarkable, or earth shattering in hearing that. We all knew viruses came and went and some people fell victim to them; but we did not go off-our-heads because of it.
The current virus has received more attention, hype, and subsequent societal restrictions beyond anything imaginable. Without it being named, it would not be as likely for that to be done on such a level.
The virus was not only dubbed, it was also given the additional label of "pandemic." The definition of a pandemic is; a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over a whole country or the world at a particular time. Strictly speaking, our predicament did fit into that very broad language. However, that formal description is incomplete and extremely vague. The problem is, there is no minimum numerical threshold to establish when a virus is of pandemic proportions. For greater certainty, the actual, on-the-ground, real-world severity of a virus qualifying as a pandemic is left blank, without parameters. Therefore, it can be a misleading label.
The Spanish Flu and The Black Plague were pandemics. Our current situation does not remotely reach any sort of reasonable semblance to those genuine horrors. The same label applied to all three is not a fair depiction any more than a mud puddle and the Pacific Ocean are in the same league, even though they are both technically bodies of water. Did giving the virus the stamp of a pandemic make it more terrifying? If people falsely correlated The Spanish Flu, The Plague, and Coronavirus as similar, it most certainly created extra unwarranted terror.
Interestingly, some tragic events are not named. When the Irish fought for independence from Great Britain it was not called a war. Instead, it is known today simply as "the troubles." Wouldn't it sound more devastating a conflict if it was called the Irish-Anglo War or other such banner?
No matter what your views of our current plight and our reaction to it, names and labels have a dramatic impact on the human psyche. Without doubt, the "The Coronavirus Pandemic" designation gives it a powerful, emotionally charged, and threateningly ominous aura.
One thing is without question, it is history making. Perhaps the most memorable account of this debacle will be the vast array of illogical restrictions applied during it. One of many examples of this is you are permitted to get on a crowded airplane with dozens of people, sandwiched together, and fly to the USA, but you cannot drive your own private, self-contained vehicle there, even if you are traveling solo. Since monikers are tossed around with reckless abandon, perhaps our reaction deserves a name of its own. How about, "The Sanity Lapse of 2020-2021"?
Before we cavalierly dismiss the importance of a name or label, we would do well to ponder the words of Confucius who said; "If names be not correct, language be not in accordance with truth."
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
