Mary Dejevsky

Has Covid changed the English language forever?

Picture credit: Getty

It was Nervtag that did it for me. The New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) was responsible for reviewing, and then delivering, the bad tidings to the government about a new variant of the Covid-19 in the UK. So much more easily transmitted did the group judge it to be that, within hours, a Prime Minister who had said he wanted to protect Christmas at almost any cost had cancelled it, and France led what became a procession of more than 40 countries curbing travel with the UK.

As alarming as the news was in itself, the name coined for the group of scientists bringing it to us was, if anything, more so – to the point where you wanted to ask whether the acronym might have been dreamt up first, in order to spread maximum fear, before the individual words were then made to fit. What, after all, does Nervtag conjure up? A serious brand of nerve agent, obviously, that makes novichok sound small and tame by comparison? Or the shadowy brotherhood of those who plant it? Or maybe a dark creature, with fangs, that lurks just to the side of your sightline.

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