Pando, Miss Rona and Covid Toe: how the language of a disease develops – shaped by fear and prejudice

Deadly outbreaks always lead to a new vocabulary, as people search for ways to understand a growing threat. And while some of the new words are merely descriptive, others have ugly underpinnings

We now have a name for the disease." These were the words of the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) in a historic announcement on 11 February 2020. Back then, there had only been 393 cases of a mysterious new respiratory illness outside China, and in most places life continued as normal. Covid-19. I'll spell it: C-O-V-I-D hyphen one nine," he continued. Little did we know that this oddly technical-sounding phrase would become not just a household name, but an era-defining one.

On the same day, the Coronavirus Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which researches the family of viruses that includes Sars, Mers and some strains of the common cold, rushed out a paper. It redesignated the pathogen that had until then been called 2019-nCoV, the n" standing for novel". The new name was severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2", or Sars-CoV-2.