{"id":1307,"date":"2011-01-02T07:46:42","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T12:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:24:11","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:24:11","slug":"a-new-meaning-for-antiviral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/a-new-meaning-for-antiviral\/2011\/01\/02\/","title":{"rendered":"2011:  A New Meaning for &#8220;Antiviral&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1313\" title=\"father_time3\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2011\/01\/father_time31.gif\" alt=\"father_time3\" width=\"183\" height=\"265\" \/>January 1, 2011<\/p>\n<p>Dear Lake Superior State University,<\/p>\n<p>Clinicians are particularly concerned about this year&#8217;s\u00a0&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lssu.edu\/banished\/current.php\" target=\"_blank\">List of Words Banished from the Queen&#8217;s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness<\/a>&#8220;, as topping the list was the word, <em>viral<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>One nominator said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Events, photographs, written pieces and even occasional videos that attracted a great deal of attention once were simply highly publicized, repeated in news broadcasts, and talked about for a few days. Now, however, it is no longer enough to give such offerings their 15 minutes of fame, but they must be declared to &#8216;go viral.&#8217; As a result, any mindless stunt or vapid bit of writing is sent by its creators whirling around the Internet and, once whirled, its creators declare it (trumpets here) &#8216;viral!&#8217; Enough already!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately, those of us who make a living seeing patients could never survive without this precious word.<\/p>\n<p>When we say to a patient, &#8220;You probably have something viral&#8221;, or, &#8220;It could be a virus&#8221;,\u00a0what we really mean is,\u00a0&#8220;I realize you&#8217;re sick, but I don&#8217;t know what you have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s not really a lie, because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.virology.net\/Big_Virology\/BVFamilyIndex.html\" target=\"_blank\">literally hundreds of viruses<\/a> cause human illness &#8212; and our diagnostic tests for them for the most part stink.<\/p>\n<p>So I am hoping that MDs, NPs, and PAs may be granted a lifetime exemption for the banishment of &#8220;viral&#8221;, and continue to use it in the rigorously scientific manner described above.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for considering, and Happy New Year.<\/p>\n<p>Paul Sax<br \/>\n(on behalf of clinicians everywhere)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>January 1, 2011 Dear Lake Superior State University, Clinicians are particularly concerned about this year&#8217;s\u00a0&#8220;List of Words Banished from the Queen&#8217;s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness&#8220;, as topping the list was the word, viral. One nominator said: Events, photographs, written pieces and even occasional videos that attracted a great deal of attention once [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,8],"tags":[79,551,976],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-antiviral","tag-lake-superior-state-university","tag-viral"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}