Common Phrases Revised for the Post Modern Era - Plagues and Military Grade

Increasingly, it seems that we need to re-evaluate many of those "common phrases / expressions" used for various things, as they are increasingly not fit for purpose!

Two salient examples.

* 1)  "Avoid like the plague"

* 2) "Military grade" 

 

1) "Avoid like the plague" 

Original Intention - People would do absolutely everything they could to avoid getting infected by the plague!  (e.g. Avoiding contact, masking up, running away from the infected *at speed*, etc.)

 

Modern Interpretation  - Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic has proven one thing for sure in that there is apparently a large chunk of the population who now actively scoff at any public health measures  and/or  personal health-protection measures.  You know, active rejection of face masks, vaccination, sanitation, or even isolation / disease containment attempts...

It's hard to tell how much of these "but muah freee-dums" folks were like this originally, or have been radicalised by disinformation campaigns during + after the pandemic,  or are actually just *bots* (being operated by various nefarious / hostile actors, many state-level actors, and some possibly being foreign-interference operations that have unexpectedly backfired into domestic collateral damage... etc.) 

Nevertheless, it's sad to say that we now have a sizeable portion of the general population - across multiple generations - who now hold such views, meaning that the world is in a much weaker position to respond to the next infectious disease outbreaks. Even more unfortunate is that until all such adherents die out, there is little hope of shifting population-level views again... 

 

2) "Military Grade"

I saw a quote today that is really genius in a bottle:

"Military grade means made by the cheapest bidder"

 

Let that sink in for a while...

 

"Military Grade" no longer (if it, actually did) actually mean things like:

  * Stronger, Faster, and Higher Precision / Quality

  * Or even better designed

 

If you think about it carefully, a lot of "military grade" stuff (i.e. stuff the military would use vs what is available in civilian grade) comes with the following caveats:

* 1) It is usually being built on some kind of constrained budget - both time and monetary!  (Even if the budget was effectively infinite, when such things need to be mass produced in the heat of battle, then yes, it will often have to follow the criteria of:

    * a) Being made by the lowest bidder, to maximise "bang for buck"

    * b) Quality of any designs don't need to be as fine and polished as for consumer-grade stuff. Heck, it could be even rougher (e.g. see the many weird + nasty WW2 cockpit designs) - They can get away with this as soldiers have to make to do with what they're given, assuming there is time + resource to even have a better alternative.

 

* 2)  The military has a much higher tolerance for people maimed or killed by their equipment - and I'm not talking about "the enemy" here. AFAIK, they tolerate much higher (i.e. "non-zero") tolerance for some level of "acceptable losses", "for the cause"... Compare that with  civilian products, where killing someone's children or grandma is a much bigger deal.