From Social Distancing to Post-Vac Syndrome: The euphemisms of the COVID pandemic
During the COVID pandemic, the skillful use of euphemisms prevented us from questioning the severity of imposed measures – or to question them too late.
The comedian George Carlin, who became famous for his stand-up comedy specials focused on sociocultural criticism of American society, was known for making pointed jokes about the political correctness of his fellow countrymen without any regard for anybody’s feelings. As a fierce opponent of Political Correctness, which he saw as a form of denial of reality, Carlin would have probably been canceled in today’s era of neo left-wing intellectual wokeness or might not have even made it into the spotlight of America’s big stages because he would have been deemed too uncomfortable. But luckily, that was different thirty years ago. “I don’t like words that hide the truth,” Carlin said in his 1990 special Doin’ It Again. “I don’t like words that conceal reality, like euphemism or euphemistic language […] Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation.”
Carlin uses a controversial taboo topic as an example: the trauma of war veterans and how the words for describing it have changed over the decades. After World War I, it was called shell shock, a clear term which, according to Carlin, uses “simple, honest, direct language” to describe the horrendous psychological suffering of veterans. During World War II, the same trauma was called battle fatigue, the term was expanded to four syllables which “doesn’t seem to hurt as much”. For the veterans of the Korean War, the expression operational exhaustion was used, expanded to eight syllables, a dehumanized, mechanical term which “sounds like something that might happen to your car”. With the Vietnam War the term Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was finally established – a term that is still used for veterans today. “We added a hyphen”, Carlin says ironically, “and the pain is completely buried under jargon.”
The euphemization of language – and therefore of reality – had already been identified as a central mechanism of political power in 1946 by none other than George Orwell: “Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”1 This was also quite apparent in the media coverage of the pandemic since 2020, where a veritable rhetoric of warfare to describe the “battle” against the virus alternated with euphemisms to describe the comparatively “easy and harmless” COVID measures. Euphemisms found their way into language exactly where they were needed to obscure the uncomfortable truth and paved the way for manipulation and propaganda.
Social distancing and flatten the curve
The Cambridge Dictionary defines euphemism as “the use of a word or phrase to avoid saying another word or phrase that may be unpleasant or offensive”. With the help of euphemisms, unpleasant truths are embellished, they sound nicer, better, more acceptable, less taboo or like something that turns your stomach. In a political context, euphemistic language serves the government to sell these unpleasant truths to the people as something pleasant or to avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes by glossing over them with a pretty, neutral word (PTSD instead of shell shock for example).
This kind of semantic whitewashing could also be observed during the pandemic as the governments of the world were trying to make COVID measures as appealing as possible – a trick that the English language is especially good at, thanks to its multifacetedness and flexibility. Who doesn’t remember concepts like social distancing or flatten the curve which were conjured up out of nothing at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020? Both terms are mere euphemisms for the isolation of people who (and the madness of this cannot be overstated!) were only allowed to leave their houses under certain circumstances, enduring lockdown for weeks or sometimes even months. But the word “isolation” of course sounds quite cruel, it reminds one of a prison, of solitary confinement, of being locked up. Social distancing, however, sounds softer and doesn’t hurt as much, to use Carlin’s words. Isolation becomes distance and this distance is cushioned by the adjective social, which semantically limits and reframes it: It suggests that the actual physical distance is just a social distance.
The expression flatten the curve was even vaguer and more ingenious as it did not even contain the idea of physical distance anymore; instead it led citizens to believe in the illusion of being able to control the pandemic. The idea: Keep your distance, stay at home, lock yourself in and together we will flatten the curve of infections and defeat the virus. Social isolation was promoted as an easy way to save lives: You just have to stay home to save Grandma. You just have to stay home to be a national hero (see video below, an exceptionally mindless piece of propaganda by the German government). You just have to stay home, so why the hell are you making such a fuss?
Two and a half years later, we are seeing that the price for this utterly absurd and undifferentiated lockdown policy is very high: The number of people in Germany who are suffering from loneliness has skyrocketed; the same goes for anxiety disorders and depression rates. A study in the US assessed that depressive symptoms among adults have tripled; a meta-analysis showed that worldwide one out of four teenagers show symptoms of depression and one out of five show symptoms of an anxiety disorder. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: humans are social by nature and social distancing is anything but trivial. And did we really save lives by locking everyone up? That is more than questionable if we look at Sweden where the excess mortality rate was the lowest in all of Europe in 2021. Sweden did not opt for lockdowns at any point.
3G, 3Gplus and the politics of exclusion
Another euphemism which the German government invented was the term “3G”. It means that only people who were recently tested (getestet), who have recently recovered from COVID (genesen) or who were vaccinated (geimpft) are granted access to certain places. Any criticism of 3G – and temporarily even 2G (access just for the vaccinated and those who have recovered) – and the massive restrictions of personal freedoms this meant for millions of people in Germany was easily disregarded thanks to this neat abbreviation. “3G“ is short and simple, it sounds harmless, it even suggests three options and it nicely downplays the legal discrimination of the unvaccinated. “3G applies here” sounds much better than: “If you aren’t vaccinated, you can only enter if you have a valid test.” But 3G effectively meant the social exclusion of healthy (!) individuals and the stigmatization of people who think differently. It was anticonstitutional. Considering the damning scientific evidence which proves that the vaccinated are in fact contagious as well – which Pfizer executive Janine Small openly admitted in front of the European parliament in October 2022 – the acronym “3G” becomes a charade that ultimately symbolizes the complete and utter failure of the German government.
To cap it off in the most typically German bureaucratic manner, politics even invented the expression “3Gplus”. Where a “plus” usually suggests that something is being added, usually something positive (the grade B+ for example is considered better than a B), the idea of “3Gplus” actually disguised another legal restriction: The validity of the PCR test you needed for entering a certain venue was reduced to 24 hours and that of a COVID rapid test to just six hours – within the rules of normal “3G”, a PCR test result had been valid for 48 hours and a rapid test for 24 hours. This is a classic example of semantic inversion: “plus” is used as euphemism for a temporal limitation and even stricter testing rules, so actually it is a “minus”. With “3Gplus”, even the vaccinated were once again forced to do a COVID test, which eventually exposed the ineffectiveness of the vaccine when it comes to controlling the spreading of the virus.
Booster and Post-Vac syndrome
What is also interesting are neologisms that entered the media sphere when COVID vaccines were finally introduced: One of the most omnipresent terms was the word booster, which rose to prominence in the last months of 2021. After two regular vaccine doses, which however did not have the desired effect, it was only a few months before governments were already advertising for a third dose. To make this idea more palatable to the broader public, the word booster was suddenly everywhere. Up until that point, nobody in Germany had heard of a booster shot (not even the yearly influenza vaccination was called booster), but now it was everywhere and with it the word booster: booster dose (Boosterdosis), booster offensive (Boosteroffensive), booster privilege (Boosterprivileg), booster effect (Boostereffekt).2 Booster sounds much sexier than the German word Auffrischungsimpfung (which literally means to “refresh” your vaccination, which actually sounds rather euphemistic as well, as if you were refreshing your immune system). Booster might remind a German native speaker of the word energy booster, something like an energy drink or coffee – something that gives your immune system new energy against COVID.
However, it is more than dubious if this booster really is all that positive. These doubts were raised when another English neologism started to be commonly used by German speakers and around the world in 2022: the so-called Post-Vac syndrome (Post-Vac Syndrom). This seemingly inconspicuous term describes the numerous, sometimes horrific vaccine side effects that can occur after a COVID vaccine shot, and it sounds similarly innocuous, technical and pain-free as Carlin’s example of Post-traumatic stress disorder. The word Post-vac syndrome does not even take the time to write out the word vaccine, concealing the very reason underlying the syndrome. No, it’s not about the mRNA vaccine, it’s about the vac. Vac sounds modern, very casual, even trendy. Nothing to see here. Technical jargon has perfectly buried the hard facts about massive vaccine side effects or even vaccine injuries. Vaccine is reduced to vac, physical damage is reduced to an indifferent, vague syndrome.3
Language is the instrument of our thoughts
The COVID pandemic has created euphemisms within the political media sphere that are used to downplay the following facts:
a) the massive restrictions of basic personal freedoms which effectively excluded certain individuals from public life (lockdowns and the discrimination of the unvaccinated);
b) the violation of the right to physical integrity (giving out multiple doses of a brand-new vaccine with barely any scientific evidence; a vaccine without which it was basically impossible to partake in public life and sometimes even to assure your livelihood); and
c) its unpleasant consequences (vaccine side effects, vaccine injuries and even vaccine deaths).
By using soft, vague language, the public has been persuaded to bend to the government’s will and blindly trust its orders – at the same time, war rhetoric was used to fuel fear of the virus and therefore create acceptance among the public for the severe measures that were taken during the corona state of emergency. It is not a secret that these scare tactics were an essential part of the German government’s crisis communication plans as the leaked strategy paper from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior has proven, which points out repeatedly that the “worst case” needs to be made clear under any circumstances and that people’s “primal fears” need to be deliberately addressed (my emphasis and translation):
In order to achieve the desired shock effect, the specific consequences of a massive spread of infections on human society have to be made very clear:
Many seriously ill people will be brought to hospital by their relatives, but they will be rejected and will die an agonizing death at home, gasping for air. Suffocation or not getting enough air is a primal fear of every human being. So is the situation of not being able to do anything to help relatives who are in mortal danger. The images from Italy are unsettling.
“Children will barely suffer from the epidemic”: Wrong. Children will become infected, even if curfews are implemented, for example they might catch it from the children next door. If they subsequently infect their parents and one of them dies an agonizing death at home, and they feel that it is their fault because they forgot to wash their hands after playing around, this is the most horrible situation a child can experience.
Sequelae: Even if we only have reports about individual cases, they show an alarming picture. Even people who have recovered after a mild course of the disease can apparently relapse and die suddenly because of a heart attack or lung failure because the virus enters the lung or the heart undetected. These might be isolated cases, but they will hang over the heads of those who have once been infected like the sword of Damocles. […]
While on the one hand aggressive rhetoric was used to instill fear and panic of the virus, euphemisms were used to portray measures against the virus as comparatively harmless, trivial and banal. Language is the instrument of our thoughts – it is through the lens of language that we perceive and understand the world. So, if a virus supposedly puts us and our loved ones in mortal danger, if it could make them die an agonizing death and if their death could be our fault, then a few months of social distancing, 3G and some booster shots are easy to handle. Right?
The reality, the numbers and the alarming side effects, which are now coming to light, show that all these euphemisms have indeed concealed a much darker reality. Again, one is reminded of Orwell who wrote: “Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”4 But what was really solid in this pandemic where week after week, month after month, supposedly irrefutable truths turned out to be wrong time and time again? How can you still trust your government, its representatives and the media?
For George Carlin, the answer to this question was quite clear. He did not trust one bit in the establishment, the so-called elite, the media or the government. “All day long […] they’re telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.” Clouded by euphemisms and tricked by words wrapped up in vagueness, the majority of people have been led to believe many things in this pandemic. Let’s wake up. Let’s reclaim language in all its directness and precision – and reclaim our critical thinking.
About the author: Born 1987, with roots in Germany and the Philippines, living in Spain. Constantly curious and eager to learn new things. Freedom > safety. Your own opinion > groupthink. Coffee > tea. Video recommendation: Undesired - COVID vaccine injured in Switzerland tell their stories.
Die deutsche Version des Artikels findet sich hier:
Politics and the English Language, Orwell 1946
Interestingly, its “viral counterpart”, Long-Covid syndrome, was not abbreviated. It isn’t called Long-Cov syndrome for example. Whereas the damaging effects of the vaccine are made to appear harmless, this is not the case with coronavirus.
Politics and the English Language, Orwell 1946