COVID-19 is reshaping our vocabulary Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world. QUOTE OF THE DAY: “What was Carnival thinking?” is the cover line of the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, throwing to a story about how the cruise ship company kept the party going well after it knew its ships were likely hotspots of the coronavirus (accompanied by a big, glossy and now practically unfathomable photo of throngs of people sunning themselves on the deck of one of said ships). The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases in Canada is at 30,000 while around 1,200 people have died. Worldwide, more than 2.1 million have contracted the virus while 140,000 have died.
“The federal government is expanding its Canada Emergency Business Account to allow more companies to qualify for interest-free loans of as much as $40,000 and will launch a new rent-relief program for Canadian companies affected by the pandemic,” the Globe and Mail reports.
Though U.S. President Donald Trump has mused that that the Canada-U.S. border will be “one of the early borders to be released” after COVID-19 restrictions are eased (which the President wants to see happen on May 1), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t as keen on a quick return to non-essential travel, saying “there is a significant amount of time, still, before we can talk about loosening such restrictions.”
Germany, which has an extensive testing system in place, is going to start lifting its COVID-19 restrictions. As the New York Times reports, “Every two weeks the government will take stock of infection numbers, [Chancellor Angela] Merkel said, to evaluate in real time the impact of each incremental measure that is lifted—and to avoid the danger of infections picking up pace again. ‘We can’t have a wrongheaded push forward, even when the best intentions are behind it,’ Ms. Merkel said. ‘We need to understand that we need to live with this virus as long as there is no vaccine and no treatment.’ ”
Africa could see upward of 10 million cases of COVID-19, the World Health Organization’s first tentative modelling suggests. As of now, the continent has around 17,000 confirmed cases and just 900 deaths.
The COVID-19 pandemic has radically reshaped the world’s vocabulary. “I find it fascinating that words which we (probably) weren’t using three months ago are suddenly completely normal and natural and are probably featured in the majority of conversations that we are having,” Fiona McPherson, Oxford English Dictionary‘s senior editor of new words, explains to Maclean’s.
In recent days, Britain has been captivated by the fundraising challenge of Captain Tom Moore, a 99-year-old veteran. He wanted to walk 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday. He just achieved that goal, and has raised more than $20 million for the National Health Service.
—Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.
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