I've started taking note of the language used in relation to covid. I've been a student of English grammar for a while now, and persuasive language as well.

There are two classes of nouns: mass and count.

Mass nouns can be treated as count nouns sometimes (i.e. we ordered two waters) and mass nouns can also be quantified with count words (i.e. a glass of water, two glasses of water).

Count nouns can be referred to with definite or indefinite articles a/an or the definite article the.

So here's where it gets interesting with regards to health language. Note the following accepted usage:

Bob has cancer.
Bob has the flu.
Bob has a cold.

Which of these classes does covid fall into? The first. A mass noun, like water, air, and copper.

Now, take a look at the list above. Doesn't it go from most severe to least? Why is that? There are many types of cancer, some of which you can have for decades and not even know it, yet a cold can kill you in a week.

Cancer is a major money maker. To speak of cancer as a mass noun, as if it's all the same, like water or air or copper, is absurd. Some types of cancer may kill you in a few months, some never will.

We treat colds linguistically as an indefinite noun because it's not special and it's something you might pick up a few times a year, just like covid. And yet the media still treats covid like the big boogieman COVID. You have COVID. Like it's a death sentence.

These little differences in language make a huge difference in perception.

Are we allowed to say, "I had a light covid," or "I got tested positive but I didn't get a covid." Because that's the reality. You could test positive but not get a covid, just as you could test positive for a cold virus but not get a cold.

But, no, we're not allowed to go there.

And what about the flu? I suspect that we started referring to the flu using a definite pronoun because in recent history we've had notable outbreaks, THE Spanish flu. THE 1968 flu. So there are definite, identifiable instances, and this is why we've adopted this definite pronoun.

Still, we should call it A flu, just as we should now call any symptomatic covid illness A covid.