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Thursday, 28 May 2020

But not yet: a rant.

St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 431) prayed make me virtuous - but not yet. 

I have a lot of sympathy with this point of view, but all the same I didn't expect delayed morality to become part of the Covid-19 debate. Really, if you've got Covid-19 then you'd think that the time to delay getting yourself virtuous had well and truly passed.

The commentator whom I came across using the phrase delayed morality was saying that many of the poor people who have died as a result of Covid-19 were already very ill and would soon have died, anyway, and that this would show up in the mortality figures by the end of the year.

Hang on...

...mortality?

Ah! Now I understand!

Words Not To Get Confused Today: morality and mortality. The word morality, which is to do with doing the virtuous thing, comes from the Latin word mōrālis, from mōs, which means custom.

The word mortality comes from the Latin word mortālis, from mors, death.


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