Pingdemic

Apparently there is now a 'pingdemic', caused by the various CV19 proximity apps sending out large numbers of notifications.

This term is dangerous: If the proximity apps ever told people anything useful about their exposure, they still do: the virus is not in the business of listening to the Johnsonites when they declare the pandemic over. So if the apps are pinging a large number of people that's because a large number of people, in fact, have been exposed. 'Pingdemic' implies that, somehow, it's just 'pings' which, somehow, are now false alerts, rather than a real thing, even though two months ago they were real alerts.

The term 'pingdemic' implies that something which used to be real has magically stopped being real, possibly because the great clown emperor has declared it so. In fact, nothing the clown emperor says is true, and the thing that used to be real still is real: the number of pings is very large because the number of infections is very large.