How much does the shadow of words weigh?

2022/02/08 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ingurumena
• COVID-19
• Berdintasuna
• Giza zientziak
• Etika
• Osasuna

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The other day I read an amazing and joyful article about the weight of shadow. Until then I didn't think shadows could have weight. Thanks to physicists Celia González Sánchez and Javier Rodríguez Laguna, I discovered that light, as it rains on a body, produces a radiation pressure on it. If this body prevents light from reaching a surface, that is, if it gives shade, it receives less pressure. It's lighter.

For more details I recommend you read the article. Its title is “How much does my shadow weigh?” and has been published on the Conversation platform in the Spanish edition.

Some words also have a long shadow, but can be heavier or lighter depending on their use. At this time of COVID 19, some prestigious words have narrowed completely, emptying meaning. These include genocide, apartheid and rape. Some have distorted so much the original meaning that many who have known the true shadow and the burden of these words have felt offended and hurt.

The word endemic, a scientific term, seems less manipulable. It is used to indicate that an infectious disease is rooted in a particular place. It does not indicate the severity of the disease. For example, seasonal heads, malaria and Ebola, are the three endemic, although they don't resemble each other, in place and form, in the capacity for no contagion, or in mortality.

Although lately the S? -CoV-2 remains widespread worldwide, in our environment, in the speeches of some authorities and in many media, it is spreading during the transition from the pandemic to endemic. Denmark has already announced the end of the pandemic and has cancelled all restrictions to deal with COVID 19.

However, some experts have warned of the danger of the word pandemic being hidden in terms of endemic or influenza. The pandemic is not just a word, but a very important one, since it is associated with international and local strategies, agreements and commitments. The endemic situation is much milder, as it does not assume the weight of these strategies, agreements and commitments.

The historian of the pests Jacob Steres-Williams has remembered that the 19th. The colonialist countries of the 20th century called some endemic diseases to emphasize that these diseases were confined to those oppressed countries. To make it clear that they were, not “ours”. A century later, the same thing happened with AIDS. We no longer call a pandemic because it doesn't affect us, it's not our problem.

There is another term that adequately indicates the weight of S? -CoV2: syndemia. This word gathers the health, social and environmental crisis that are related to this virus. But they've left it in the shadow. It seems too heavy.