Corvid

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When they first gave the corona virus the name “COVID 19”, I said “Oh, so that’s where they think it came from, huh? Not bats like they said the other day?”

Partner looks at me quizzically. I say “Umm, that’s a kind of animal, right? Covids? I mean it’s a taxonomic category of animal, some kind of birds I think?”

She says “It says here the name comes from COrona VIrus Disease of 2019”.

Periodically since then I’ve been intermittently muttering to myself. “Covid, covid, what the hell’s a covid? I’m not hallucinating am I? There was a word…”

Yeah. Corvid. Crows and stuff. (Kinda like the ones in The Stand, in fact).

Anybody else?

2

Well, I didn’t have the think Corvids were call Covids, but I did absolutely misread COVID as CORVID and had the same assumption for the first… day or so. Probably read it as that just because I like crows and read about them a lot.

3

I heard about the bat connections when I only knew about the virus as a Coronavirus. So I never made the incorrect correction. But I find Corvids fascinating and talk about them a lot. So if I had seen Covid-19 first, I probably would have made the wrong connection at first too.

Crows & Ravens are among the smartest animals. Rooks & Bluejays are fascinating creatures. and then there are magpies like Heckle & Jeckle. Magpies are very smart and recognize themselves in mirrors.

4

With me, it lasted a few minutes before I realized my mistake. I was pissed off - how cool would it have been if it were actually Corvid-19? We could call it “the Crow Plague” or “the Raven Death”* or something cool like that! The fantasy geek in me was very disappointed.

  • Double Poe!
5

Note that Corvids are a host animal for West Nile Virus. During an outbreak a lot of dead crows around is an early warning sign. So a lot of people out there have a bit of brain wiring tying “Corvid” to “virus” already.

6

Carrion crows have been associated with death since forever. The leap from that to viruses is not that big.

7

I didn’t mistake it for the Polish curse word kurwa (pronounced like koorva) but I did note the minor similarity to COVID when we started to first hear that term.

8

I thought this thread was going to be a complaint about the number of people who are calling it CORVID-19 rather than COVID-19. I am seeing that incorrect usage all over social media, and it is really starting to bug me.

9

I love it. I picture ravens swooping down all over our cities, raining pestilence and death. And that amuses me, briefly.

10

There’s a journalist on NPR named Korva Coleman. I always think ‘Corvid’.

11

Bird flu was what…twelve years ago?

We saw dead birds all over the place.
~VOW

12

Nevermore.

13

OK, why is a raven like a writing desk?

14

Another who kept misreading COVID as corvid for…a good while. Finally got my brain to recognize the former, though.

15

Poe wrote on both.

16

The notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes.

They should both be made to shut up.

17

I once won a trivia contest because I knew what family corvidae was. They’re birds, not viruses.

18

Corvid? No. But there have been several occasions when I wrote Convid.

19

Yeah, 19 crows are not gathering to harm you.

But if they were, it’d be a murder.