Motif Pandemic Style Guide

Since the pandemic situation we’re in is so new, we’ve had to write our own style guide for it, and I’m publishing it publicly in the hope it may be useful. Some of it is admittedly opionated.

We follow World Health Organization (WHO) terminology. The pandemic is caused by a virus properly called “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” and this is properly abbreviated “SARS-CoV-2.” The medical condition resulting from infection by this virus is properly called “coronavirus disease 2019” and this is properly abbreviated “COVID-19.” One becomes infected with a virus and not with a disease, so it is improper to say, for example, “infected with COVID-19” or “infected with the COVID-19” virus (repeating the word “virus”); better phrasing is to say simply “has COVID-19,” “is diagnosed with COVID-19,” “shows symptoms of COVID-19,” and so on. Similarly, diseases but not viruses have symptoms.

WHO has since 2015 discouraged the use of names for viruses and diseases that are geographical, and use of geographical names is acceptable only for historical viruses and conditions named earlier, such as “Spanish flu,” “Ebola virus,” “Dengue fever,” “Zika virus,” “Lyme disease,” and so forth. In the case of COVID-19, which was first observed in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, terms such as “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese virus” are regarded as pejorative, xenophobic, and possibly racist, and should be strictly avoided unless necessary and relevant.

The term “coronavirus” describes a group of viruses that cause a range of different diseases of widely varying severity. SARS-CoV-2 was, before officially named, referred to as “novel coronavirus.” In epidemiological terminology, a “novel” (pronounced like the type of book) virus is new and therefore no one yet has immunity to it. Failure to understand this resulted in mistaken memes circulated on social media showing years-old bottles of ordinary commercial cleaning solutions that say they are effective against “coronavirus,” supposedly supporting a conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2 is nothing new. It is true that some types of coronavirus cause, in addition to rhinoviruses, what is usually broadly classed as “the common cold,” but it is also true that other types of coronavirus cause deadly illnesses: the coronavirus variant “SARS-CoV-1” causes “severe acute respiratory syndrome” which is properly abbreviated “SARS,” and the coronavirus variant “MERS-CoV” causes “Middle East respiratory syndrome” which is properly abbreviated “MERS.”

The term “coronavirus” was chosen in a scientific paper published in 1968 because the arrangement of protein spikes under an electron microscope visually resembles the corona of the sun that can be seen during a total eclipse, which in turn is derived from the Latin word “corona” that means a garland or wreath worn as a crown on the head in ancient Rome. The word “corona” is standard Spanish for “crown,” and this notional suggestion of royalty is the basis for the name of a Mexican beer brand. Widely circulated rumors are false that sales of the beer brand were significantly harmed by public confusion with the virus.

Most new viruses enter the human population from animal reservoirs, the term for which is “zoonosis.” Strictly speaking, “zoonosis” is a noun that describes the pathogen (“SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonosis”) but informal usage in the press often misapplies the term to the process of interspecies infection. The scientific pronunciation is “ZOE-en-uh-sis” and this is nearly universal outside the US, but common variants in the US are “ZOO-en-uh-sis” and “zoo-EN-uh-sis.” The adjectival form is “zoonotic” (“SARS-CoV-2 is zoonotic”). In Greek, “zoo” means “animal” and “nosos” means “disease.” The opposite term is “anthroponosis,” a pathogen that is passed from humans to animals.

For patients who fatally succumb to COVID-19, the most common scenario is that the proximate cause is “pneumonia” which is an inflammation in the small air sacs (“alveoli”) of the lungs, progressing to “acute respiratory distress syndrome” (“ARDS”) which a widespread inflammation of the lungs. The treatment is “mechanical ventilation” using a machine (“ventilator”) that forces air into the lungs to compensate for their reduced efficiency, hopefully keeping the patient alive long enough to recover, and this requires sedating the patient into a “medically-induced coma” so that a breathing tube can be very precisely inserted and positioned through the mouth or the throat (“trachea”) into the airway (“intubation”). Although ventilators were called “respirators” in the 1950s, that term now exclusively describes protective face masks worn by health care providers.

Different nations have comparable but different standards for “personal protection equipment” (“PPE”) such as protective face masks. In the US, an “N95 respirator” is certified to protect the wearer by filtering out 95% of particulate matter but not oils, gases, or vapors. Generally considered equivalent standards include the Chinese “KN95,” the European “FFP2,” the Korean “1st class” (sometimes called “KF94”), the Australia-New Zealand “P2,” and the Japanese “DS.” Proper wearing requires a face seal that is tested each donning, and is generally incompatible with facial hair. Surgical masks, called “face coverings” in medical terminology, are simple cloth or polyester barriers that prevent the wearer from expelling large droplets when coughing, sneezing, or speaking; these are not respirators and are not primarily intended to protect the wearer.