Dear Reader (I know you’re somewhere under that pile of Doritos bags),

This pandemic has yielded many terrible things, caused great sorrow, and required great sacrifices. Deaths, heartache, closed businesses and lost jobs, heightened domestic and international tensions, cancelled weddings and lamely Zoomed graduations: the list goes on and on.

I do not want to minimize the importance and gravity of such things. But let’s face it, lots of people are writing about these things—giving voice to the voiceless, calling attention to the tragedies, celebrating the indomitable spirit of those staring death in the face every day. But I ask you, Who—who!?—will speak up for the murder in plain sight of the distinction between “less” and “fewer”? You, Lieutenant Weinberg!?

Every day, on a bipartisan basis, Republicans and Democrats, journalists and politicians, America Firsters and Globalists, rather than let the silky butterfly of “fewer” alight upon the flower of proper usage, cram down the leaden, fecal moth of “less.” And they do the same thing in reverse, because this metaphor doesn’t require strict adherence to logic, taking the pristine application of “less” and sullying it in the sewer of misplaced “fewer.”