Here we go.

This is the thing, you see – like a lot of words, “epidemic” has a narrow literal meaning and an expanded, somewhat metaphorical one. I think “epidemic” probably originally referred to disease only, but it’s been used to mean “[undesirable] trend” and the like for a hella long time. Kate Osborne isn’t wrong to say that it’s not a hooray word – it’s used of trends the speaker dislikes or disapproves of, not of trends she welcomes and embraces. We don’t talk of an epidemic of politeness or safe driving. We do however often talk about epidemics of [thing I don’t like] without meaning “disease.”

So, Osborne would have been on safer ground, I think, if she’d said that using the word epidemic is a dog whistle. She would have been wrong, I also think, but not as close to slanderous as she was.

Why do I think she would have been wrong? Because Badenoch wasn’t saying there’s an epidemic of these horrid people, she was saying there’s an epidemic of bad things being done to people. Transing teenagers is bad, and an ideology that urges the transing of teenagers is bad.

The war between the literal and the metaphorical continues.