The ‘quad-demic’ is here – and with it I have become a disease detective | Zoe Williams

Anytime anyone tells me they are ill, I now launch endless inquisitions about their symptoms. Why do I care so much?

Neologisms may have the excitement of the strange, but there is nothing exciting about the quad-demic" if you're afflicted by it. Even if the idea of getting out of a load of events is thrilling to you, you would still prefer to have a cold, or maybe sprain your ankle, than get any of the quartet: flu, Covid, respiratory syncytial virus or norovirus.

Nevertheless, with warnings of a tidal wave" of disease this winter, any time anyone is ill, I want to know where on the quad they would put themselves. And people are ill everywhere you look, which is, I guess, why they're calling it a quad-demic". It's not, particularly in the case of norovirus, any of my business. It takes studied restraint to stop me drilling in for symptoms.