English phrase "inject it with smallpox"
Hi all,
On a piece of NPR news, the journalist wrote "Not bad for an admittedly wonky foreign correspondent, who couldn't make his own reporting go viral even if he injected it with smallpox." Can anyone tell me the meaning of "injected it with smallpox"?
Thanks!
Top answer
This is a pun on the word 'viral'. Reporting that 'goes viral' is going to reflect well on the person who has written it. The correspondent wants his work to 'go viral' as thousands of people will get to see it.
- This is a pun on the word 'viral'.
- Reporting that 'goes viral' is going to reflect well on the person who has written it.
- The correspondent wants his work to 'go viral' as thousands of people will get to see it.
- The writer is being self-deprecating; he is suggesting that his work would not go viral as he is not good enough.
- He uses 'injected it with smallpox' as a pun on the other (original) meaning of viral - diseases which are easily spread from one person to another.
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This is a pun on the word 'viral'. Reporting that 'goes viral' is going to reflect well on the person who has written it. The correspondent wants his work to 'go viral' as thousands of people will get to see it.
The writer is being self-deprecating; he is suggesting that his work would not go viral as he is not good enough. He uses 'injected it with smallpox' as a pun on the other (or
0Smallpox used to be a deadly disease. It was very contagious. So if one person got smallpox, all of his friends, family and schoolmates might get it. The writer uses this as an analogy. He was saying that the reporter's stories were so terrible that nothing, not even extreme measures, would make it spread around social media.
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