A study by a group of UCLA professors that was published in 2020 has stuck in my mind since it appeared as it offered a new way to understand how unfounded conspiracy theories emerge online.
The research – entitled An Automated Pipeline for the Discovery of Conspiracy and Conspiracy Theory Narrative Frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and Storytelling on the Web – combined fairly sophisticated artificial intelligence and a deep knowledge of how folklore is structured to explain how unrelated facts and false information can connect into a narrative framework that would quickly fall apart if some of those elements were taken out of the mix.
I thought of this when I came across an Instagram post, thoughtfully labeled as “False Information” by Meta Group’s fact checkers, which contends that “Covid spelled backwards is Divoc.” It goes on to “explain” that “Divoc in Hebrew means “possession by an evil spirit,” intimating that thence stems the term “Covid.”
Within a few seconds, I had pulled out my שילה Comprehensive Pocket Dictionary, which confirmed my suspicions. “Divoc,” as such, is not a word in the Hebrew language.
When what we now call SARS-CoV-2, or more commonly, Covid-19, first appeared in Wuhan, it was referred to, least of all by me, as a novel coronavirus, which it is. International guidelines promulgated in 2015 discourage the use of geographical locations or groups of people in disease and virus names to prevent social stigma. All one has to do is think of the Spanish flu, the Middle East respiratory syndrome, or even the name used by then President Donald Trump, the “China virus,” to understand why this is important.
“We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people,” said the WHO’s director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at the time.
As a result, the World Health Organization issued both Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2 on February 11, 2020 with Covid-19 a shorthand for “coronavirus disease 2019.”
See, no evil spirits.
Mindful that my last name in Hebrew – שפירא – can be pronounced “Spira” or “Shapira,” I recalled that a Yiddish word – דיבוק, pronounced dybbuk – was spelt “דָּבַק” in Hebrew.
Meanwhile, Covid in Hebrew is spelt “קוביד” and if you spell that backwards, it does come out “דיבוק” which is essentially the Yiddish spelling. However, a dybbuk is a wandering spirit that enters and possesses the body of a living person until exorcized. This is not the same thing, however, as “possession by an evil spirit.”
So, there you have it. Covid is a neologism, spelling it backwards only yields gibberish in Hebrew, but – and I have to wonder if it’s possible that whoever started the conspiracy theory knows Yiddish and Jewish mythology – but there you have it, spelling the neologism Covid backwards in Yiddish – a language that is the official language in one place, namely (get this!) Russia, and more specifically, ייִדישע אװטאָנאָמע געגנט, or the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
In addition, the majority of Yiddish speakers are Haredi Jews.
As for me, I’ll just say, “זײַ געזונט,” transliterated as “Sei gesund” or “be well” for now.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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