Pandemic or epidemic?

The use of the word “pandemic” for Covid-19 illustrates how language shapes our perception. This lexical choice, adopted by everyone, contributes to a distorted view of the reality experienced.

Beware of Assumed Truths

The words we use as self-evident truths are always loaded with symbolic and political meaning, regardless of the lexical field. The more something appears objective to me, the more it signifies that this thing is, in reality, deeply political. That is to say, precisely because it seems objective, it is a sign that it is a belief ingrained in us as truth. This is why it is even more than political—it is almost religious. Politics and religion, moreover, share many links throughout history, whether in worldviews, societal organization, thought, the roles of individuals, or the structures of domination—which, unfortunately, are far too numerous and widespread.

I take the example of a simple word, the word “pandemic,” to describe the Covid-19 period. It was used both by those who believed in the extreme danger of this virus—those who lived in fear and panic during that time—and by the non-believers, those who were less influenced by fear at the time. The latter were often labeled by the fear-believers as reckless or even dangerous to their fellow citizens. But whether they were believers in fear or not—and I emphasize believers in fear, because it is evident that a dangerous, epidemically spreading virus did exist (and still does today)—the clarity about the danger of a phenomenon observable around us is not at all the same as panic-driven fear, especially when amplified by the media and political systems. These systems found great benefits in controlling populations, ushering in widespread digital surveillance, and accelerating the wealth accumulation of certain capitalist groups at an unprecedented pace.

Not to get into the Covid-19 debate

So, whether they were believers or non-believers in fear—not in the epidemic itself (I specify this because the reality of the epidemic was observed)—both groups shared a common perception of reality. I stress this because the subject is highly polemical, and regrettably so. Anyone who dared question this belief in fear was immediately discredited, labeled a “conspiracy theorist,” or accused of believing in a false reality. In fact, contrary to the misinformation spread by dominant media at the time, many of the non-believers in fear were well-informed on health issues, took active preventive measures, and were generally less affected by the epidemic than the average fear-believers.

It is important to clarify this because the reductive, guilty impulse to discredit dissenting voices as reckless is clearly a defense mechanism of a “Ministry of Truth” that is ontologically as weak as its violence suggests. That is, it is infinitely violent because it is infinitely detached from reality. But to close this debate—which shouldn’t even be a debate—I specify that what I am discussing here is not this false controversy but rather the use of words and their political impact.

Unconscious Political Drifts

Even the non-believers in fear during that time used—and still use today—the word “pandemic” to describe the period. Yet it was not a pandemic but an epidemic. The definition of “pandemic” was, in fact, altered in March 2020 on the World Health Organization’s website to mean simply “international spread,” whereas it had previously denoted an international spread accompanied by a very high mortality rate among affected populations, as with the plague or the Spanish flu (which had a 10-20% mortality rate between 1918 and 1920). We can see that words change meaning—or rather, their meaning was changed at the start of this period. A pandemic is an uncontrollable epidemic that decimates a significant proportion of populations. We never use this term for annual flu epidemics, for example, which are just as deadly as Covid-19 was (no more, no less).

During the 2020-2021 period, labeled as the “Covid era” (though the virus still exists and circulates just as much today), the number of Covid-related deaths, while significant, did not produce excess mortality compared to previous or subsequent years. There were no more deaths in absolute terms during the Covid period than in the periods before or after. Of course, there are debates about the timeframe.

Thus, if we look at mortality rates and proportions—considering all causes of death (Covid, flu, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, old age, AIDS, suicide, etc.)—it was not a pandemic period, at least not by the original definition of “pandemic.” The use of the word “pandemic,” when one knows its true meaning, sows fear, embeds a political agenda, a belief, a religion of fear. It reinforces the false idea that this was a pandemic when it was not.

Restoring Meaning to Words

What is powerful and interesting here—and why I find it important to discuss—is that this lie about reality, this “post-truth,” as it is called today, is perpetuated by both believers and non-believers. We call this period the “pandemic.” That the fear-believers use this word is understandable; it aligns with their belief. But the absence of linguistic counter-power in how we represent this period is deeply troubling, because it ingrains in our lived experiences, our present understanding, and our future expectations a shared vision—despite opposing beliefs. If the word “pandemic” is still used in 10, 20, or 100 years, people will believe there truly was a pandemic, simply because we use the word and know what it used to mean.

So, we have very powerful words that are being misused. They retain their historical weight, but the reality no longer matches their original meaning. We enter a state of cognitive dissonance between an imaginary reality—the “pandemic”—and what actually happened. It is in this *emptying of meaning* that a disturbance arises in those who use these words. Words no longer designate a simple, concrete reality; they designate a fantasy, unmoored from truth. As a result, through the existence and use of such words, we gradually lose our capacity for critical judgment, because there is no longer a clear true or false. Everything is blurred, fluid, so to speak.

To reconnect the imaginary to the real

We are in a hazy imaginary, propagated by media beholden to financial and political interests that benefit—at the expense of the common good—from this very ambiguity. There is a perversion of language that corrupts humanity’s grounding in shared, real knowledge.

I am well aware that some reading this will perceive me as a dangerous conspiracy theorist and insist that there was a real pandemic, that it is the correct word, that it was all very serious, etc. I invite them to examine, as objectively as possible, the retrospective statistics of that period, particularly mortality data. But this is normal—we do not share the same belief. I do not judge these people, nor do I place myself above them. This article is not written for them, as we do not share the same belief, and that is respectable. It is rather for those who, like me, believe that fear was unnecessary during that time to better protect oneself from the real dangers of the epidemic.

And so, I invite the non-believers in Covid fear to try using the word *“epidemic”*—which is absolutely accurate—instead of “pandemic,” to introduce a small counter-power in language and defend our ideas, which we see as more democratic and empowering than the belief in a threat far more imagined than real, as has been repeatedly proven during and since that period.