March 2020, while I was making my way in Vietnam, in New Zealand you were experiencing your first nationwide ‘lockdown’ and with that, so began the COVID viral lingo.
From my residence in Buon Ma Thuot, Dak Lak, central_Vietnam, via my stalwart HP laptop, plumbed into Vietnamese WIFI, channelling ROVA, streaming New Zealand Rock Radio, during the months of March and April 2020, from what I was hearing, somebody had overhauled the English language and, from across the world in my COVID-free paradise of Buon Ma Thuot, seemingly, I had been left unaware of this.
March, April 2020, despite advertising throughout my adopted Vietnamese town ‘English Lessons from a Native English Speaker’, regarding the supposedly Kiwi radio broadcasts I was receiving, it felt almost as though I was tuning into a different language.
Never could I recall hearing groups of people referred to as ‘clusters’, or a group’s personal space classified as a ‘bubble’, or how, if not part of that cluster’s bubble, one must practice ‘social distancing’, use ‘hand-sanitiser’, ‘wear a mask’, or sometimes even ‘full PPE’.
The ‘global pandemic’ initially named ‘Coronavirus’, or ‘Corona’, was presently followed by ‘COVID-19’ or ‘COVID’ for short, before earning the decidedly less official title ‘Covid’, which was followed by a sobriquet of unnerving familiarity ‘the virus’; the virus inspired a unique vernacular, probably more akin to ‘epidemiologists’ and ‘virologists’ or people – ‘infected’, ‘symptomatic’, ‘asymptomatic’, or otherwise – languishing in ‘managed isolation’ or ‘quarantine’ (later to be given the trendy pseudo-espionage abbreviation, ‘MIQ’, not to be mistaken with ‘QR codes’ with which everyone in your bubble needs to have ‘scanned in’).
As a global populous, during these unprecedented times, most of us had little trouble adhering to a set of similarly unprecedented standards; alas ‘cases of COVID’ have fluctuated with ‘new waves’ caused by ‘outbreaks’ of ‘community transmission’ which often leads to ‘isolation’ then sometimes ‘lockdown protests’ from people who are not ‘essential workers’ resulting in higher ‘case numbers’ at the ‘testing station’.
With ‘border closures’ in effect, the ‘travel bubble’ bursting repeatedly, and ‘MIQ spots’ running short, if nothing else, COVID-19 has produced a rapidly changing, always interesting and often entertaining, dialect.
Coronavirus, Corona, COVID-19, COVID, Covid; Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and now the ‘Delta variant’ has exemplified ‘viral evolution’, and now the ‘Pfizer vaccine’ might be our best hope of returning to normalcy, as we await the ‘vaccine rollout’.
Think about it, now is the only time one can utter the words freely and without offering affront – ‘get vaccinated’.
What a time to be alive.
Article by Tim Walker
Edited by Wad A Tame
Photography by Toby Alive