Raymond Devos liked to raise the question about the difference between a
“good flu” and a “bad flu”. In doing so, as always, he pointed to the
importance in the use of words and their genealogy to understand their
meaning and define the action which they imply.
Thus, the “flu” about which we are going to speak so much, is a word of
Frankish origin (which also gave greifen German, “to seize”) from the 14th
century which designates a kind of claw, harpoon, allowing to hold
something. It gave the verbs “to catch” and “to jam” meaning then “grasping”
or “slowing down” which we do not use anymore other than to say that a
machine or a mechanism “jams”.
By extension, the “flu” also refers, in the same season, to a “whim”, which
gets a hold of us unexpectedly, hence the expression “take a dislike to
someone” meaning a sudden and unpredictable aversion for somebody, as if we
grabbed him by the neck for no reason. It is only in the 18th century
that this expression came to indicate a disease which seized a patient
abruptly, affection called up to that point, as in Italian, by the name of
“influenza”, which comes from the low latin influentia (“which flows”, which
gave the “flux” in French and the “flu”, “influenza” in English).
All these meanings are useful in order to think about all the possible
courses of action against the upcoming flu.
First, they remind us that we must not allow ourselves to be “caught” by the
disease, hence the importance of the explanation, which remains to be given
to the general public, on the symptoms and the precautions to be taken.
Then, they underline that we should not let the human and social machine
“jam” and therefore ensure that society has redundancy, resiliency, a
capacity to withstand the shock. In other words, that it has several means
of ensuring the essential services, such as the distribution of the main
“flow” of water, energy, food, and money. And of this, no one is yet sure. In
France in particular.
They tell us that we should not treat it as a “whim” random circumstance,
but as the result of a logical evolution of our societies, which, with
globalization, could not avoid this kind of dysfunctional situation, whose
flu to come is only a repetition which could be transformed one day in a
much more serious disease, if we do not put in place a whole series of
protections and warning indicators.
They also tell us that some people may be taken in “aversion” because of the
disease, if such or such group is being accused, as do those who see the
hand of the pharmaceutical companies there to sell drugs and vaccine, or
governments anxious to draw aside criticisms relating to their management of
the economic crisis.
They finally report profound changes to come in our societies, by revealing
as in New Caledonia, the ability of the population to take charge, or, as
elsewhere, how some continue to treat a particular category of the population
(like women and the will to send them back home to care for children), or finally,
how humanity will have to become aware of its unity, in order not to take
itself in aversion.