I think they are actually trying to be slightly funny about this, maybe it’s not coming across because corporate. But read some of their statements again in a different intonation. I mean, “We prefer to call it the B. 1.617.2 variant since that is so much more simple to say and remember” can’t be taken literally.
It's the 6th highest body count of any pandemic in history after The Black Death, Spanish Flu, AIDS/HIV, The Plague of Justinian, and the Antonine Plague, and it's on track to beat the Antonine Plague.
This is highly misleading as you are ignoring the number of deaths compared to the population.
The Antonine plague killed 2,6% of the world population.
Covid, so far? 0.04%.
It is not even close to beat the Antonine plague.
Just for perspective: The upper estimate for covid deaths in 2020 was 3M.
The average estimate for yearly tobacco deaths is around 7.5 M. Every FUCKING YEAR, almost 3 covid pandemics caused by cigarretes.
Not to mention that the averaged covid death age is very close to the average life expectation, that is, a majority of people who died of it would probably die in one year or two.
Does it means is not a serious disease? No. it doesn't.
Does it means it is a hoax? hell, no!
But does it means that there's an unwarranted level of panic? You sure bet.
You said 7 figure body counts in 2 years weren't bad by global pandemic standards.
7 figure body counts in 2 years put you in the top ten deadliest natural disasters in human history.
No one was talking about fraction of the population, nor was anyone talking about effective reduction of life expectancy. You specifically were using the metric body count.
If you want to make an argument that this pandemic isn't that bad because the people who died this time don't count for as much as those who died in other pandemics, you can do so, but I think that's a poor strategy for corporate PR.
I agree with your points but I also think it's an important distinction that people choose to smoke cigarettes. I don't think folks without mental health issues are intentionally getting COVID.
I was thinking the same thing in the beginning. "Stay home, have a Corona Corona." Maybe team up with drizzly or another delivery service, and all the chain restaurants that were suddenly allowed to have takeout drinks.
There is an argument for both approaches. I do remember Isis company changing name, because 1) ISIS became a household name 2) it was placed by OFAC on their lists. All of a sudden, doing basic transactions in US became difficult. Needless to say, name change had more of an impact on more than just branding here.
I agree that in this case, they should play it light.
Yeah, that situation was worse. American Express had a partnership called ISIS and issued cards under their "Serve" brand. They literally said "serve isis" on the front. That name had to change.
I don't think the stigma here is nearly so tangible.
The Archer tv show used to call its main spy org ISIS. And then one day, they just stopped referring to it by name at all. Gave it the silent treatment.
The website we used to register for classes at University of Florida was also ISIS (Integrated Student information services or something like that). They have since rebranded it as well
Interesting, at the Technical University of Berlin it's also called ISIS for Information System for Instructors and Students - they haven't changed the name though.
In Oxford there's a lot of places called Isis because that's the name of the stretch of the Thames which flows through the city. Fortunately most businesses weren't willing to cede the name to the militant group so cheaply!
They are leaning into it. Did people not read the article? They’re handling it slightly differently but it’s all a joke, that makes very much reminds you that their is a simpler and more common name.
People are more concerned about COVID when flying than they are buying beer, possibly. Certainly a beer commercial can have a different tone than what you find at airports in these times. I'm not sure they should lean into it.
That said, NYT did a fantastic job visualizing how air circulates on planes and it made me feel safer about flying:
I still don't feel safe with flying. Literally every time I get on a plane I get sick, you cannot convince me they are safe against the spread of Covid. There's more to that than just air circulation.
I agree, I really don’t understand how air circulation helps when you’re in a middle seat and the two people beside you have their masks off to eat peanuts and are coughing every 2 min
I’m referring to the overall air quality which was better back when you could smoke because the airlines were forced to change the air more aggressively. You can’t hide smoke as easily as invisible stagnant air.
Anecdotally I recall the beer aisles being relatively empty during the so-called panic buying, except for corona which were untouched.
Companies spend a lot of money to associate their brand with a good feeling, I can't imagine that the people who bought it as a joke outweighed the negative association.
They could lean into it, but perhaps it could be seen as disrespectful to the dead and those suffering. “Don’t catch Delta! Catch a Delta flight instead!”
I would temporarily abandon the word by itself and instead use the phrases “Delta Airlines” and “Delta virus variant”. Clarity at the risk of wordiness.
Eyeballing the share prices of the parent company, Corona's BUD is doing worse than e.g. Coors' TAP since the start of the pandemic. I don't know enough about the companies to know if that means much but at least that preliminary check suggests Corona might've suffered.
Delta Air Lines should be used to this type of confusion by now.
In the ICAO spelling alphabet, Delta is the word for the letter D. The world's busiest airport also happens to be the main hub and headquarters for Delta airlines. Due to the possible confusion between Delta for D and Delta for the airlines, air traffic control and ground operations in Atlanta use Dixie instead of Delta. Now that Dixie is problematic, guess they'll have to switch to something else. Inside the airport, the "Plane Train" people mover uses David for D so as to not confuse travelers that Concourse D means it's where their Delta flight has its gate.
The name Delta, referring to the Mississippi Delta region, was suggested by Catherine FitzGerald, a secretary who later would rise to the rank of an executive in the company. [0]
Despite the name, [the Mississippi Delta] region is not the delta of the Mississippi River. The shifting river delta at the mouth of the Mississippi on the Gulf Coast lies some 300 miles south of this area, and is referred to as the Mississippi River Delta. Rather, the Mississippi Delta is part of an alluvial plain, created by regular flooding of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers over thousands of years. [1]
I think this is a reference to naming virus mutations... after 10 more mutations (?) we'll arrive at the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet, Xi. Which is also the family name of the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
> Which is also the family name of the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
Well, it has the same English spelling. It's not a similar sound at all; you would probably think of one as "ksee" and the other as "she".
Though the standard English practice is to pronounce xi, pi, phi, chi, and psi as if they rhymed with "sigh", making the words even less similar. Different consonant, different vowel.
I know that, but that's not a difference that exists in English. You can't think of 习 as being a sound you don't know. You have to think of it as a sound you do know.
Meanwhile, the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself is campaigning to make sure there is no "Spirit" variant because it doesn't want the association with the airline.
For some reason, it's hilarious to anthropomorphize the virus.
In the end, the virus is just doing it's thing and humanity is doing the same; both trying to survive not necessarily through any malicious intent but just because it's what we do.
Too bad we can't come to some sort of truce, alas that's where the fantasy ends.
I remember this happening previously with a company named Isis Associates [1]. They opted for a name change in that case. Obviously, it wouldn’t get to that with Delta (their brand isn’t Covid after all). Still, interesting to see how global events can impact branding.
One of my favorites, from the suburbs of Philadelphia, Arcadia University, née Beaver College...
> The rise of the internet, with systems designed to filter out sexually explicit material, repeatedly blocked access to the college's website. Research conducted by the institution found that, because of its name, the institution appealed to 30% fewer prospective students. In June 2001, trustees voted to apply for university status and to change the name. [1]
The television series Archer had to do this. International Secret Intelligence Service just disappeared the name and started calling themselves a bunch of other things in season 6 and then finally made a joke of it in the season 12 premiere two days ago.
I'd like to just make a counterpoint: It's not that we have fewer "real" journalists, its that we created a massive number of platforms that don't hire journalists but proport to peddle "news".
We still have plenty of great, high quality journalists, but we have even more low-quality clickbait and chaff to sift through. The issue isn't that the good stuff went away, it's that we're flooded with junk because it's easier to produce.
Maybe? Let's get some definitions: Who counts as a journalist/reporter? Who should we be respecting?
Of course "person who writes articles published in print news" is going away. But is the guy writing a well researched piece for Vox not a journalist?
It just seems like we have more everything, both signal and noise, and that's the issue. We wanted to democratize information, and we got it. Surprise, most people don't put out very good information. But at least we have a lot of it...
Local news is dying (and being monopolized by the Sinclair group), and being replaced by online news. By sheer numbers, even a 25% percent reduction in local journalism would vastly outnumber any number of paid online journalism, because there's an order of magnitude difference in the total niche space available.
Anecdote: In Greece there are tons of brands that use..greek letters. in their name, Alpha Bank, Alpha (TV channel) etc... yet no one seems to be complaining about this. If I were Delta Airlines, I would bow to the people after being bailed ($5.4B) by the US taxpayers rather than "crying a river" over such trivial matter.[1]
Because Greek letters in Greece are (obviously) very generic. "Alpha Bank" has sort of similar meaning as "First Bank". Meanwhile, "delta" outside of Greece is not that omnipresent and thus much more specific.
I don't know if you ever watched the Sopranos but there's a line from it that I think applies. Tony is referring to his mother (who he feels is ungrateful):
"She's like a woman with a honey-baked ham under her arm cryin' that she don't got any bread"
I think that's a similar argument that parent is making.
If you've been bailed out and you worry about how the word "Delta" will affect your company that has also got Delta in it, then you're not using that money wisely.
Corona beer wasn't too happy at the beginning either, but people got over it. Lots of things share names; it won't take long before people are used to it.
I worked for a company called ISIS. When all that terrorist stuff happened, they actually started to run into problems with banks, so they renamed to ISI Limited. Then of course, ISIS became ISIL...
CHRONOLOGY OF ORGANIZATION OF NORTH AMERICAN NATIONS’ REVENUE ENHANCING SUBSIDIZED TIME™, BY YEAR
1. Year of the Whopper
2. Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
3. Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar
4. Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken
5. Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster
6. Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office Or Mobile (sic)
7. Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland
Back in the 1980s, the quip was that Delta stood for Don't Ever Land There Again. I believe that one incident had a pilot mistaking the Ohio State University airfield for the Columbus airport; the other was somewhere in the mid-South.
The newspaper story makes little sense if read exactly as written since any jet has ample performance to climb away from a balked landing prior to touchdown, so I assume the realization happened after touchdown given the agreement upon review that stopping was the right call.
There’s an image of this on the wall of the “new” (2019, maybe?) terminal building at OSU and I think a few sentences on the lightening they did to fly it out.
lambda airlines would like to have a word as well. okay kidding but i haven't heard anything from greek life about this. i could imagine how terrible this could be for an airline. although i remember hearing that corona beer had the same type of issue last year
Of the major US carriers, Delta is certainly the worst IMHO. They've been hit by Covid-19 like all the airlines, but their concerns about public perception would be improved more by them stepping up their game and improving quality. They always seem to me to have embraced the "airlines are just flying busses" philosophy.
Improving quality compared to what? In my experience, Delta and United are completely interchangeable, and comparable to the much more limited experience I have on foreign carriers. For some reason American consistently has the most obnoxious passengers and (presumably related to the preceding) the rudest staff.
You should try Japan Air Lines (JAL) or All Nippon Airways (ANA) for comparison. The difference is amazing. With those airlines, First/Business class actually means something besides a slightly larger seat. With Delta, first class means spending the entire flight with the Coach passengers parading up and down the aisle on their way to the lavatories that are not supposed to be available to them. Another very noticeable difference is in the age, appearance, attitude, and demeanor of flight attendants.
This is why I personally call it the "delta airlines variant" because the humor of there obviously being no such thing helps make the point that there is no such thing.
TBF they avoid it in their premises, they re not asking others to do so. There's a good reason for that, people might get confused when reading instructions from Delta about Delta, and also, a lot more people will notice the name coincidence if they mention it in their messaging.
Oh grow up Delta. Seriously, sometimes companies really act like children. We obviously don’t think the delta variant is related to Delta airlines. Do you think all Charlies just changed their name from the charlie variant.
It's funny how people were completely fine calling it by countries (e.g. "UK variant") but when it came to India (or China/Wuhan) - Discrimination! - it's OK do discriminate against the first world though.
(I agree though that eventually a new naming system was needed, countries cannot be reused twice...)
I don’t understand the whataboutism in these situations.
> It was initially called the Indian Variant, due to being first detected there in April this year.
But it was later renamed the April 02 Variant by the Scottish Government to avoid stigma in associating the variant with people from India.
There is a reason why they did that, fortunately third world countries didn’t attack people from UK. But first world people can’t understand that variants name has nothing to do with the uninfected people from that country.
I heard dozens of cases where Asians were attacked.
Ah, so you conveniently just ignored the existing people who live in those countries, due to various reasons?
And u think the Asians who got attacked in the first world countries were Tourists?
You misunderstood my point. Or rather I didn't communicate it properly.
Renaming the virus variants won't solve the root problem. Nor will racist attacks, of course, but that's just people's desperation showing, because their governments refused to implement good solutions that could solve the root problem.
I see your point now, but yeah when people are desperate, desperate measures are needed.
We have Anti-Vaxers, Moon landing deniers. So sometimes some decisions may sound stupid, but to some degree they might help.
Maybe, but I don’t think the track record shows that.
IMO the more likely consequence is that the populace continues to lose the respect and trust for their governments. This started with banning plastic straws (now you get a paper straw wrapped in plastic!) and it’s accelerated since the start of the pandemic.
To be fair, govts are very slow. Changes take a lot of time.
What one party agrees is not met eye to eye by other.
Also take an example of Cookie banners.
Govt wants to do something, corps come up with BS to evade. Now to make it change a step further, it takes a lot of time and is constantly brought down by lobbies etc.
At the end of the day, common man suffers.
But its not just govt, at every step there is irresponsibility, greed etc.
Maybe Delta should take a lesson, I think very few people are deterred from flying because the new virus has the same name as your airline.