Typhoid Mary

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English

Etymology

Based on Mary Mallon (1869–1938), a notorious asymptomatic carrier of typhoid who refused to cooperate with the authorities about her condition until they resorted to forcible confinement.

Noun

Typhoid Mary (plural Typhoid Marys)

  1. A person who carries and spreads a dangerous disease, especially one who refuses to cooperate to minimize the risk of infection.
    • 2001, Stephen King, Dreamcatcher, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 356:
      “ […] Do you know what our great fear has been? That either the grayboys or the Ripley would find a Typhoid Mary, someone who could carry it and spread it without catching it him- or herself.”
    • 2019 January 20, John Naughton, quoting Shoshana Zuboff, “‘The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism”, in The Guardian‎:
      And it was a Google executive – Sheryl Sandberg – who played the role of Typhoid Mary, bringing surveillance capitalism from Google to Facebook, when she signed on as Mark Zuckerberg’s number two in 2008.

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