Alphabet of the pandemic

"It presents a grim and melancholic picture."

If the words and phrases closely associated with the current world health crisis were arranged in sequence from A to Z, the result would be an alphabet of the pandemic.

I have undertaken that exercise, and the following is my alphabet of the pandemic.

A is for asymptomatic, ayuda, APOR and AstraZeneca. B is for bubble, biology, Bayanihan Acts and BioNTech. C is for comorbidity, contact tracing and capacity limitation. D is for doctors, disinfection doses and deliveries. E is for epidemiologists, essential workers, EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) and ECQ (Enhanced Community Quarantine).

F is for frontliners and Dr. Anthony Fauci. G is for gatherings and granular lockdowns. H is for handwashing and herd immunity. I is for infection, intubation, immunocompromised, ICU (intensive care unit), IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force) and isolation.

J is for Johnson & Johnson and jab in the arm. L is for lockdown and LSI (locally stranded individuals). M is for masks and Moderna. N is for nurses. O is for online shopping, obesity and overwhelmed hospitals. P is for protocols of health, PPE (personal protective equipment) and Pfizer.

Q is for quarantine.

R is for respiratory system, recoveries and rollouts of vaccines.

S is for social distancing, senior citizens, symptoms, super-spreader events and swab tests. T is for transmission, testing, temperature checks and travel restrictions.

V is for vaccines and variants. W is for Wuhan and waves of infection.

Try as I did, I could not come up with pandemic-related words and phrases beginning with K, U, Y and Z.

The closest I got were youth for Y – young people lately have come under closer scrutiny for their role in the transmission of COVID-19 within families and in schools – and zeal for Z.

I could not think of anything at all for the letters K and U.

In truth, the word “zeal” does not begin to approximate what the medical frontliners – doctors, nurses, ambulance, crews, laboratory technicians and hospital housekeeping personnel – have done for the world’s COVID-19 victims during the past year.

The word “heroic” readily comes to mind in today’s situation, but this word, too becomes inadequate when account is taken of the thousands of infections and deaths. Nurses – especially ICU nurses – and doctors. The non-medical frontliners (hospital housekeeping staff and security staff especially), deserve out undying gratitude, too.

This is the alphabet of the health side of the pandemic; it presents a grim and melancholic picture.

There is, also, an alphabet of the economic side of the pandemic. The picture that presents – loss of employment, loss of income, reduced production, increasing hunger etc – is even no less grim and melancholic.