ping

"We get notifications every time a new case is confirmed in the UK and it's been pinging quite frequently, unfortunately," Ms Postance said.

But I think the story stays for a deeper reason, something that pings on the national conscience—something barely articulable that’s just there, like a cloud we all operate in.

“If you are a freshman at Penn or you’re a freshman at Yale or a freshman at Harvard, as soon as you move into your dorm room, you might get pinged by McKinsey,” Binder said.

That was compounded by “echoing alerts,” when the message pinged repeatedly and seemingly at random.

ORLANDO—I was half asleep when my phone pinged with an alert from Delta Air Lines late Sunday.