2021, issue 46, Elke Hemminger: The Corona pandemic hit Europe in early spring 2020 with a force and speed that found its societies and people largely unprepared. Apart from the lack of experience with a situation like this, there was also a lack of adequate verbal expressions for what was happening. People had to expand their vocabulary in order to understand the differences between an epidemic and a pandemic (including the legal, medical, and political implications), and they had to find new ways of describing the societal need to limit social contacts and reduce individual mobility.
