Jargogled Impressions.

Languages are funny in that their constant evolution, itself a flight-to-fight mechanism by the language, is often met with amusement and push back. People adopt different metrics to measure the effectiveness of language and new words are a great way to track the liquidity of the currency of language.

In the age of COVID-19, the usage of “social distancing” as a verb has picked up. Often used interchangeably with “physical distancing” now when the guidelines around the practice has evolved away from reducing close contact with a large group of people (hence the word social), to reducing close contact with people, period.

There are also several other terms being used widely now amongst the bourgeois, as folks start learning about the medical terminologies involved (quarantine, R0, asymptomatic, case fatality rate, active-cases, incubation, etc.) and the world responds to the ensuing pandemic (community transmission, droplet transmission, contact tracing, quantitative easing, shutdown, shelter-in-place, etc.). Governments are having to re-define what “essential activities” mean in the event of a shutdown like the one announced in India.

And then there are social memes that have started circulating with hashtags like “flattening the curve”, “mask-On”, etc. that aims to use the social media to spread messaging around pandemic best practices. We have new found understanding of the types of masks that healthcare workers use (N-95 respirators) and the types that we should be using “home-made masks” so as not to over-burden the supply chain of these now-elusive masks.

All of this in a span of a month.

Our languages are our means to communicate. It also becomes the way we think, through the articulation of words and bringing together different verbs and nouns together. When communication is essential and of critical importance, as is the case with the virus situation, communication becomes even more key towards handling it well. Institutional communications, across the commercial and public sides, enable the employees and the citizens to rely on the employer or the state in learning how to deal with an uncertain situation.

Most people follow these prescribed approaches by the institutions we have built around us. We were dependent on the mandatory “shelter-in-place” guidelines from the state before we could take any action at our end. We are now relying on guidelines from the CDC to determine if we should indeed get a mask or stitch together a mask. It’s the information gap that makes us rely on the powers-to-be for making decisions on our behalf. Although there are many, who may have seen a lot of zombie movies, or follow a strictly libertarian diet, who focus on self-sustenance first and end up barraging the convenience stores and the pharmacies for their own share of these masks or toilet papers or sanitizers. What makes these people distrust the government so? Is this agency towards your own life?

Statecraft depends on creating a common, simplified framework with which to govern the chaotic masses. Without a sort of framework, example a cadastral map, state cannot hope to drive the uniformity that’s needed to administer services or extract rents in the form of taxes. The first promulgation of a healthcare plan came via way of an Act by President John Adam for the relief of sick and disabled seamen. An act of the state to bring uniformity in delivery healthcare services to the masses. The American Medical Association started regulating healthcare practices in US starting 1850s and began issuing licenses for physicians who up till then comprised of traditional and domestic healing measures administered by un-registered physicians. Licensing involved coming up with a single framework with which to evaluate the doctors.

The healthcare system in US is a wild untamed beast at the behest of capitalist principles of creative destruction and competitive price determination. Even then, price gouging is still a frowned upon practice when it comes to healthcare and drugs administration. Through the decades of evolution, every attempt to nationalize healthcare system in US has been casted as a communist plot, and we have ended up with the current version of the managed care system with opaque policies and regulations that has broadly dissociated the care from the health-care system. While the innovation that’s streaming through the US medical system is breath-taking, driven largely by this very evolution, there is a case to be made that new technologies have far outpaced the flattening of the healthcare inequality spectrum. What this means is, that the rich have a far bigger and powerful platform to get healthy, or de-couple themselves from a pandemic. Think about this for a second – we often call death the great equalizer. And yet, as our innovations and technological developments take root and expand into the frontiers of bio-tech, cheating death by delaying it has become a prerogative of the rich. And the healthcare system is primed towards chasing the currency of our life – money.

Social distancing guidelines are steps taken by the state to reduce the burden on the healthcare system and expected occupancy rate in the hospitals and healthcare delivery centers.

At its core, social distancing is an imposition on personal freedom for the collective benefit of humans. And yet, it has evolved over to be a part of the cultural war between those who are favorable of more government in our lives versus those that adhere to the libertarian philosophies. Result? There is a game being played out to share these ideologies in the public arena. Games take on various shapes depending on the ideology in question (left versus right, bhakts versus others, etc.) and affects how we can respond to the pandemic through a) investment in preparedness, b) taking decisions, c) bolster scientific research, and d) communicate effectively. Depending on which spectrum of the ideological divide you are part of, your opinions would differ for each of these response measures for the pandemic.