Summary/Abstract |
If you just flex your ears a bit, the ambulance’s wail could dissolve into an air raid siren. Words help that conversion along, producing the Covid battle cry. While downplaying the pandemic throughout, U.S. President Donald Trump referred to himself as a “wartime president,” dubbing the Covid-19 pandemic “an attack” worse than Pearl Harbor and September 11th.1 New York governor Andrew Cuomo called it “a new war that no one has ever seen before,” and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio stated “We need to get on a wartime footing.”2 Referring to his own state’s reaction to Covid-19, Ohio governor Mike DeWine stated “it has to be the type of response you take in war time because we have been invaded, literally.”
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