Skin-hunger and coronajerks: The Dutch are inventing new words to describe the impact of the virus
Severe backlash to the Covid-19 shutdown may be felt among a minority of the US population, according to polls, but it has gotten fierce and deadly.
A security guard was shot in Flint, Michigan, after getting into a verbal altercation with people not wearing a state-mandated face mask at a Family Dollar store.
A man was caught on camera pushing a Texas park ranger into a lake when he asked weekend lake-goers to stay six feet apart.
A man wore a KKK hood to a Vons in Santee, California. There are pictures of him in the produce aisle.
Stillwater, Oklahoma, had to retreat from a face mask order when business owners in the college town got verbal threats of violence after asking people to wear masks.
Norman McNickle is the city manager in Stillwater and during an interview on CNN he gave his theory about the pushback:
“It is as you know, unseen enemy. They don’t see it. We’ve been fortunate here with a low number of cases and a low number of hospitalizations and one death in our county. And I think the belief is that it’s just gone. Or that they’re young enough that they will catch it and survive. And frankly, many of them don’t care much about others that they might pass it on to.”
Do you have the ‘skin hunger’?
The Dutch-born anthropologist Harald Prins points out the effect coronavirus has already had on his native language:
It appears, not surprisingly, that Covid-19 related neologisms are rampant in the Netherlands (and probably in most if not all other languages, too). I doubt most will survive but some will, albeit with unsuspected accretions.
In Dutch, for example, few realize that a popular word like “klerevent” (difficult to translate, but equivalent to bastard or rotten fellow) derives from cholera (klere).
Here are some Dutch corona neologisms with my free translations (but several terms resonate in a unique social-cultural way in the Netherlands):
Huidhonger / skin hunger: a longing for human contact while in isolation
Anderhalvemetereconomie / six-feet-economy: an economy constructed to avoid spreading coronavirus
Hoestschaamte / cough-shame: the anxiety one may experience about possibly triggering a panic among the people nearby when making a coughing sound for whatever reason
Coronahufter / coronajerk: shopper at a supermarket or store who violates the six-foot social distance prescription or other safe-keeping protocol.
Druppelcontact / spray-contact: exchange of little droplets when sneezing or coughing, esp. as source of infection
Onthamsteren / dehoarding: processing long-stored shelf-stable food into a meal.
Straatschaamte / street-shame: the embarrassment someone experiences when being out for urgently necessary errands during lockdown
Toogviroloog / blather-virologist: dilettante who spreads false or unsubstantiated information about the virus, its transmission, or its treatment
A new Dutch corona lexicon was created and is updated. It already comprises 700 new words, including those noted above.
The models are all over the place
A model often cited by the US government has nearly doubled its projection of US coronavirus deaths from more than 70,000 to more than 130,000. Separately, a Trump administration model projects a rise in coronavirus cases and deaths in the weeks ahead, up to about 3,000 daily deaths in the US by June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times.
The models are hard to keep track of and are all over the place but one thing is clear: Most states are not yet on a downswing of Covid-19 cases. Simply look at the state-by-state graphics.
Current US death toll: > 68,000
Here’s a timeline of all the Trump administration death toll estimates, which have now been revised upward. My takeaways from the White House repeatedly being wrong about how many people will die are these:
Things we’ve done as a country (easing social distance, etc.) have impacted and will continue to impact how many people die (it will be more);
More than 100,000 dead Americans in a period of months is not something I ever thought I’d be writing in modern times.
This story by CNN’s Ray Sanchez about how New York City is learning to deal with so many bodies is very hard to read without turning away, but you should.
All asymptomatic. Another reminder that we often don’t know who has coronavirus is this incredible story out of Missouri.
“373 employees and contract workers at Triumph Foods in Buchanan County, Missouri, have tested positive for coronavirus. All of them were asymptomatic, according to a press release from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.”
Nobody got treated worse than Lincoln? Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is putting himself up alongside Abraham Lincoln, both literally and figuratively. He took part in Fox News town hall at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday night. Here are some of the things he said, courtesy of CNN’s Chris Cillizza:
“I have a good feel for this stuff. I’ve done it for a long time.”
“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people.”
“That’s one of the — if you call losing 80,000 or 90,000 people successful, but it’s one of the reasons that we’re not at that high end of the plane, as opposed to the low end of the plane.”
“And I don’t want the credit. I don’t care about it.”
“They always said Lincoln — nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
