The Covid-19 pandemic. Categorization, normalization, information and disinformation

The SARS-CoV-2 virus's infection, spread from China to the rest of the world, was designated as a “viral pneumonia”, “epidemic” and “pandemic”, which inscribed the phenomenon on a semantic field that enables to describe and understand it, as well as react to it. To analyse such identification, we’ll apply MCA (Membership categorization analysis) and the frame analysis, in order to highlight the operational dimension of such categorization, and reveal the extent to which designation and typification produce a normalization effect. For that matter, it is also reflected how historical analogy is used, and how past situations may contribute to provide intelligibility frameworks as much as to reduce both uncertainty and contingency of this situation. Thereafter, we observe the informational scope and how information and misinformation coexist, through imprecisions and untruths that erupted in the public space, on the present case, similarly to analogous past situations, these last ones that are evoked in historical terms, according to their different contexts and information conditions.