In the initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was grappling with a ‘new normal’, even as governments kicked in ‘lockdowns' across the globe. In those days, there was still optimism about halting the spread through ‘social distancing’. R naught and contact tracing were the terms bandied around as optimists sought to ‘flatten the curve'. Four months later, those words have lost their novelty, and are part of the everyday lexicon. In the meanwhile, many other terms and phrases are entering our everyday speech. Here is a listicle :
Pandemic fatigue: You switch on the news channel and there is the latest update on COVID-19 patients. You want to step out but the metro is not working because of the corona lockdown. You can't have that grand 50th birthday bash because social distancing is the order of the day. After nearly four months of living with the pandemic, one is simply tired of it on many levels – physical to emotional. That is pandemic fatigue for you. It is a dangerous thing because it makes people throw caution to the winds, and indulge in high risk behaviour like chucking the mask and thronging public places. Some also describe pandemic fatigue as that general feeling of listlessness and actually fatigue, triggered by the gloom all around.
Doomscrolling: The habit of listlessly surfing television channels or the internet, moving on from one gloomy report to another. A sure shot way to get into depression or pandemic fatigue.
VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous): A term first coined in the 1980s and used by the US military, VUCA assumes various meanings as situations change. Once, it defined the post-Cold War world, today it is used liberally to define the present times. “The first half of 2020 has been VUCA,” many experts like to say. You can talk of VUCA challenges and how to navigate them; you can also discuss the opportunities that emerge from a VUCA world.
Build back better (BBM): This is a term used by the optimists, who know that there will be a world at the end of the pandemic, and they want to create something better then, than the legacy which led to the pandemic in the first place. BBM is an approach to a post-disaster scenario, where planners try to build in a certain resilience. It was first officially used in the third UN world conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015 at Sendai, Japan, and finds mention in the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.
The cleaner air and water and wonderful sightings of fauna in urban areas during the first weeks of global lockdowns gave many of the present generation their only glimpse of what an unpolluted world looks like and the BBM resolve strengthened. Alas, with masks and personal protection equipment now strewn all around the garbage, that particular resolve was ephemeral.
As a policy, however, BBM hopes to build in resilience into societies and economies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat is in tune with the BBM vision.
Hybrid/blended: The lockdown lectures have proved beyond doubt that while educational institutions need to tech up their teaching processes—go online with lectures and assessments—the brick and blackboard infrastructure cannot be totally moved online. Endless screen time is not good for either students or teachers. The future, therefore, they say is blended/hybrid, with a mix of both forms for instruction and teaching.
MOOC (Massive open online course): These courses have been available online for years, with everyone from Harvard to the University Grants Commission (UGC) offering them. Most Moocs are free if the learner only wants to attend the lectures, but if she desires a certificate at the end of the course, she needs to sit for a test and has to pay a fee for it. In an attempt at encouraging the hybrid model of learning, UGC recently announced that students can accumulate upto 40 per cent credits in college by taking up Mooc programmes authorised by the UGC. It has even announced that Mooc assessments should not clash with term exams.
Herd immunity: A term used by epidemiologists since decades, herd immunity is now that golden ideal towards which societies hope to reach, in case the vaccine or cure for the disease doesn't come soon enough. Herd immunity occurs when a large chunk of a population is immune to a disease, and thereby prevents it from spreading. The percentage of a population required to be exposed to a virus for herd immunity depends on the type of the disease—the more infectious, the higher and the population percentage.
Herd immunity can be sped up by a vaccine, as has been done for most infectious diseases under compulsory vaccination, like polio. It can also be acquired the natural way, with many people getting infected once. However, given the nature of COVID-19, herd immunity may come at a very high cost to life.
A recent sero survey which shows that a quarter of Delhi's population has coronavirus antibodies, has triggered discussions on herd immunity.
Community Spread: A stage in the life cycle of an epidemic when the transmission from person to person is so rampant that it is nearly impossible to do contact tracing and understand the pathway of the spread of the disease. It happens when many people in a community are infected. What actually is community spread of course depends on how officials wish to describe it. And officials are usually loath to admit that an infection has reached the stage of community spread.
