Roll up your sleeve

Back in the days when radio was fun, Paul "The Emperor" Rodgers played the song "Baby I'm-a Want You" by Bread on WCBM, and explained the title by saying, "Well, they had to call it something!"

Indeed.

So now comes the Covid-19 Vaccine by Pfizer-BioNTech, the vaccine that has been coursing through my bloodstream since April, fighting off the Covid cootie, and it has its own brand name now. 

And it shall be known henceforth and forevermore as Comirnaty.

That sound you just heard was a major pharma company making a splashy swan dive into an empty pool.

Comirnaty. Sounds like "community," only not as friendly. You can picture your doctor looking down past your uvula and saying, "Looks like you've got comirnaty."

"We were all excited when Aunt Slouch showed up at the covered dish supper with her homemade comirnaty pudding!"

"The record hop down at the fire house was a lot of fun Saturday night. We all learned to dance The Comirnaty"

"The mechanic asked me what sort of noise the car was making just before it conked out, and I said it sounded like 'co - co - comirnaty!' "

One more?

"We decided to keep Ollie Sue home today...she was feeling sorta comirnaty."

Well, sir, the official name of the vaccine that many need is pronounced koe-mir’-na-tee. They got the name from putting corona words in a blender and spinning them around.

Take "Co" from Corona, add "-mirna" because it's an mRNA vaccine, and tack on the -ty suffix, and, as the manufacturer says, it represents both the words community and immunity. 

This all dates back to the magic year 2020 - remember? - when an outfit named Brand Institute, an agency whose job it is to develop brand names for products, was hired by BioNTech to come up with a snappy name for this vax.

Brand Institute is proud to tell you that it was they who came up the names Tylenol Rapid Release and Advil Dual Action!

Someone said on Twitter that most drug names sound like someone is trying to make something good out of a bad pile of Scrabble tiles.

Over at Moderna, they're still hoping for complete FDA approval for the vaccine they came up with for the  Covid-19.  The European Medicines Agency told NPR that the vaccine may be called SpikeVax.  

SpikeVax! That sounds like some sort of ghoulish Halloween candy. There are probably a hundred better names for a lifesaving vaccine within arm's reach. How about?

• Novid
• Rosie the Queen of Corona
• AbbottDabIt
• AntiDeSantis