A Virus and a disease

When our recent pandemic started, we referred to the virus as the novel coronavirus. This was a temporary measure until we found an official name. The official name that was given to the coronavirus was COVID-19... Or was it?

At the time, two names were created. COVID-19 was the name established for the disease caused by the virus. The virus itself was named SARS-CoV-2.

Even though the coverage of the pandemic was excessive, I suspect most Americans don't even know the name of the virus that has been going around. Most Americans likely only know the name of the disease.

I'm not going to lie. I'm not a medical expert. That said, I think it's reasonable for me to question the media's terminology. If the medical community created two different names, it seems like there must be a distinction between the two.

Is asymptomatic COVID-19 real? If you don't have symptoms, do you really have the disease? Alternatively, is it possible to have the virus but not the disease? Can you transmit the virus if you are not diseased by it? Is COVID-19 even contagious? Are people transmitting the virus, or are they transmitting the disease caused by the virus?

Again, I'm not an expert. Despite that fact, I think there's plenty of reason to question the accuracy of the media's coverage. You can make an argument about semantics, but it seems to me that the media is confusing the virus with the disease. If they're getting this wrong, what else are they getting wrong? We're supposed to trust them in giving us useful information during the pandemic, but I don't even trust them with their terminology.

I also have questions beyond the media. What about COVID-19 tests? Are we testing for the disease? Wouldn't it make more sense to test for the virus? Maybe we're mislabeling these tests. I honestly don't know.

Perhaps I'm seeing something that's not really there, but nobody has even tried to explain the distinction between the virus and the disease. I have no choice other than to guess. If the members of the media were doing their job, guesswork wouldn't be necessary. Even if my suspicions are wrong, the American media is failing the public.