There are many people, and not just those in positions of power, who have persuaded themselves that reality is “socially constructed”—that there is no objective reality, there is only that which we define using human faculties. This is a deeply interesting philosophical idea. But this has also led to the belief that we can change reality by manipulating words or images: if we call something by a different name, it actually is different. This is only partly true, in a narrow sense. The virus is real and it does not care how we see it or what we say about it.
