A while back, I proposed that we needed to rename COVID. I felt “Mandalorian Death Cooties” was a much better title. It sounds exotic and menacing. COVID sounds like either the rec center at a small private college or the answer to some calculus question I got wrong in college. (I got a lot of calculus questions wrong, by the way.)
Then we got Delta. We just skipped right over Beta & Gamma in the Greek alphabet and went to Delta. Did I miss a memo? Delta wasn’t scary enough of a name either. According to the dictionary, a delta is “a nearly flat plain of alluvial deposit between diverging branches of the mouth of a river.”
I’m supposed to be frightened of an alluvial deposit? Repulsed mabye. But not frightened. On a side note, I asked my wife if we could rename the bathrooms in our home the “alluvial depositories.” She asked me not to speak for an hour.
So, while I’m in timeout, let’s get back to COVID. From Delta, we went to Omicron. What? That sounds like a villain in a Transformers movie. Or maybe an 80s German New Wave band. How am I supposed to take that seriously?
As I said, nobody listened to me when I said we should change the name to Mandalorian Death Cooties. But think of the positives. First, I’m betting that after reporters had to repeat that over and over for a few months, something magical would happen. They would get tired of saying it and only do stories when there was something to report!
Today, we have a relentless barrage of stories designed to keep us scared and clicking links. Most don’t tell us anything different than the day before. I’m guessing that would have died out now if the name of the pandemic-causing virus had three words and six syllables.
Also, just think how amazing it will sound when your local news anchor says that the football game was canceled this week “because of an outbreak of Mandalorian Death Cooties.”
