Slight tangent, but does it grate on anyone else when people use language about people being a “fighter” when it comes to illness?
(As Dominic Raab said about Boris)
As if it’s by some act of personal will and fortitude that someone’s lungs don’t fill us with liquid or their cytokines behave themselves?
Yes, there's a lot written by people who've been diagnosed with cancer & find the war language detrimental/annoying/distasteful.
I hated it & found it to be distastefully false. I also know some people who found it helped them navigate not just the diagnosis but also the difficult treatments.
Marina Hyde has written about the war language this week:
'The horror of coronavirus is all too real. Don't turn it into an imaginary war'
The language of war is baked in to most of us, to one degree or other. Our new daily discourse runs deep with talk of field hospitals, frontlines, the battles against an invisible enemy. The shock of the news that prime minister Boris Johnson lies seriously ill in intensive care drew a tide of messages and well-wishes from world leaders and other politicians, many of which invoked a kind of martial courage. “You are a fighter and we need you back.” “He is a fighter and will beat this virus.” Together, “we will be able to win this battle”. “You fight for a swift recovery.” “You are a fighter, and you will overcome this challenge.” I truly hope he does. (continues)
As the news gets more horrifyingly real each day – and somehow, at the same time, more unmanageably unreal – I’m not sure who this register of battle and victory and defeat truly aids. We don’t really require a metaphor to throw the horror of viral death into sharper relief: you have to think it’s bad enough already. Plague is a standalone horseman of the apocalypse – he doesn’t need to catch a ride with war. Equally, it’s probably unnecessary to rank something we keep being informed is virtually a war with things in the past that were literally wars. “Your grandparents were called to war,” runs one popular meme. “You’re being asked to sit on a couch. You can do this.” Unsurprisingly, given this level of bellicose confusion, we have already seen those who visit the park literally branded “traitors”.
Perhaps most importantly, it should be said that people don’t die from this ghastly illness because of a lack of fight, whatever that might mean. Patients don’t “lose” against coronavirus because they failed to smite it or to personally out-strategise it." (continues)
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/07/horror-coronavirus-real-imaginary-war-britain