Zoom, masks, quarantinis: The pandemic-era glossary
There were also quarantine babies (and quaranteens), anthropause, hush trips and Gloria Gaynor. How many of these ring a bell?
Some terms won’t seem to go away; others have had their meanings forever altered. Zoom, for instance, will never be just about movement again. What other words came to describe or typify those years? Here are a few lesser-known ones.
* Pandemic babies and Quaranteens: For those born or entering their teens between 2020 and 2022, life took a unique twist. Babies struggled to develop social skills but effortlessly crashed their parents’ Zoom calls. Meanwhile, Quaranteens rode out the emotional rollercoaster of adolescence within a digital bubble.
* Anthropause: This is the term that came to define those long weeks when airports were stilled, tourism halted, even movement within cities stalled. Wildlife took to the quieted streets and emptied skies. Air pollution levels dropped. Noise pollution levels fell, even in the oceans.
* Hygiene theatre: Remember the shields between tables at restaurants? The little signs that said every taxi and every hotel room was sanitised after each use? There were also promises of “no-contact” vegetables, food delivery, transport services (how?!). The term for it all is “hygiene theatre” (similar to “security theatre”, coined by computer security specialist Bruce Schneier in 2003). It is the term for dramatic action that offers an illusion of greater safety but little actual increased protection.
* Mask: This used to indicate beautiful, handcrafted tribal souvenirs from Africa, Sri Lanka or rural India. That will never be the first thing that comes to mind, for anyone reading this today. Oh, how quickly they took over our world. We collected and counted them; argued and fretted about them. They began to come in a range of colours, fabrics and prints (offering cosmetic relief, but often, not as much protection). Shops doled them out at the entrance. They saved lives. They changed lives. How many of us still have one in our backpacks?
* I Will Survive: Sing the birthday song twice, and you’ll know you’ve washed your hands for the requisite 20 seconds. It’s a link we’d never cared about before, and cannot now forget. The chorus of I Will Survive worked for this too; and as this tip went viral, with everyone tired of the birthday song by now, Gloria Gaynor posted a clip of herself, singing her famous song, and washing her hands. Strange times.
* Quarantini: After the banana bread and amid all the sourdough, people began to experiment with alcohol. Bartending offered the same release from monotony as all the baking, and similar delicious returns. Quarantinis became the term for the cocktails people whipped up at home, as well as the strange vats of homemade beer and oddly coloured toddy. Most of the world was happy to let the professionals take over again, once the bars opened back up.
* Remote: Pass the remote, we used to say. What a quaint, remote town, we used to say. Those meanings are returning, but it’ll be a while before the single-word response fades away. “How’s work?” “Remote.” Cue envious looks.
Those early Work From Anywhere (WFA) months had a range of fallouts. People moved back to their hometowns and saved on rent. Prices in prime rental markets such as Mumbai and Bengaluru fell. The beaches and mountains filled up with “remote” workers. Countries promoted digital-nomad visas.
* Hush trips and quiet vacations were among the other side-effects of “going remote”. Another sad outcome: the 24x7 employee. Remote workers certainly save on commute times and don’t even have to put pants on (though really, who works pants-less all day?). But as teams have shrunk and workloads grown, most workers, wherever they are, simply aren’t logging out.
One marvels at the memory, in fact, of a world in which one finished the day’s work, turned off one’s computer and then, simply left it behind.
* This isn’t a pandemic term, but we thought we’d end with a reminder of a punchline we all gasped at and shared… not realising then just how true it was:
A time traveller arrives from the future.
“What year are we in,” he asks?
“It’s the year 2020,” says a man hauling groceries home amid the first lockdown.
“Ah,” says the time traveller, “the first year of the pandemic.”
It’s hard to think back now, to those early days when we didn’t know it would be three years before it was really over.
Hard to think back to all that has been lost.
Which is why one of our favourite terms at Wknd is “flatten the curve”. It serves as a reminder that, in the hardest times, through months that were manic and also so oddly still, we did come together as communities.
We leaned, more gently and more willingly, on one another.
Science came through. Logic, largely, prevailed.
We did make it through.