Cultures are going to change. Not just ours, everybody's.
I've heard a couple new uses of language and there will certainly be more. I don't expect that the terms I've started using work for anyone else, but they provide a less-boring way to talk about changes-in-progress.
It's easy to go dark very quickly in the coronavirus hole, so this note on vocabulary is deliberately on the lighter side. That's probably helped by the fact that I'm not in on medical jargon.
baabaas: What I'm calling ironically vulnerable populations, demographics, and politicians who have made the mistake of listening to the wrong leader, against their own survival prospects. For the term to apply, both conditions need to be present, so most applicable to elderly religious organizations and states like Florida, Mississippi and Alabama.
bc: Before coronavirus. I've heard this used already. It feels right. I'm not at all sure that 'ac' will go anywhere, it feels more like there's a bc and a now.
cv: Sorry, curriculum vitae, your stuff has been taken.
cv-lite, cv-medium, heavy cv: One way to phrase the virus' levels of effect.
cv-lite is asymptomatic or about as much trouble as a regular cold for only a couple days.
cv-medium is a multi-day problem, heading into weeks, but not involving marked difficulty breathing. Maybe a little but not much. (If what I've been having this last week is actually cv, it's looking like cv-medium.)
heavy-cv is high fevers, trouble breathing, complications with pneumonia, and so on. In Seattle, you can maybe eventually get tested if you're in the middle of heavy-cv.
cv-maybe: The status of suspecting you have had cv but not having been tested and therefore not likely to be sure anytime soon, as of early April in the USA.
emissary: Someone friendly and helpful who tested positive already, survived, cleared the time limits and is now running errands and shopping for friends and family. Eventually emissary status probably needs to be extended officially into being able to return to work, but that's future-talk. For now, emissaries care for their community.
mask-maker: Self-explanatory, but relevant to both private individuals and larger organizations like
NanoLeaf. Maybe also useful to describe companies and organizations that are converting to making medical supplies instead of what they usually make.
necromancer: Politician or pundit who argues that those most vulnerable to the virus should be willing to greatly increase their risk of death so that everyone can get back to work and keep the economy rolling. Not necessarily applicable to every scientific argument that heads this way, but definitely applicable to talk show hosts and politicians who claim they'd be willing to die to save the economy so everyone else should be too.
returner: Version 1) Player who left a familiar roleplaying group behind because of a move or other circumstance, who is now returning to the table because everyone has to be online, not just them.
Version 2) Future possibility: what emissaries could become, people with antibodies against cv who get to return to wider life and helping people without worrying about spreading the disease; requires wide distribution of antibody tests and yes, hopefully science that proves that antibodies matter.
tree-counting: Paying too much attention to the reported numbers of cases, because the forest is so much larger than the trees. Only positive tests make it into the numbers, and tests that are pending don't make it into the numbers yet, and so many people are asymptomatic. Morgues and mortuaries in the USA, at least, may be a bit of a Wild West in terms of how deaths can be classified, perhaps especially in places that don't want to have cv deaths.
I said I'd stay on the lighter side, so I'll sign off with links to two good things.
![For the Time Being by [Dillard, Annie]](http://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41ouwC6SsvL.jpg)
![The Hydrogen Sonata (A Culture Novel Book 9) by [Banks, Iain M.]](http://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51yzJzSbyrL.jpg)
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