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The terms people choose when speaking of the Covid-19 epidemic reveal several types of attitudes toward this long-lasting event. Representations vary by gender, age, educational level, socio-occupational category, position occupied in the home sphere, and whether or not the speaker has had direct experience of the disease. In a statistical study of responses to an open question asked of a single panel in two waves of a coronavirus survey conducted from April to June 2020, we found two sharply different attitudes to the epidemic: a personal attitude, more commonly found among women, where respondents apprehend the effects of the disease at the scale of the home or their own health; and a political attitude, more common among men, that references a more global scale. Whereas the personal attitude remains relatively stable over time, the political view of the problem fluctuates and responses are more likely to be reformulated.