"urgency" as a count noun

[Arnold Zwicky]

Jim Landau:

Near my home is a billboard that is currently advertising an outpatient clinic.  The ad shows a boy holding an ice pack to his head and the text reads "This is an urgency" (as opposed, one supposes, to "emergency".)

I know "an urgency" can be used in a context like "there was an urgency to his speeches..." but I would not think of that as a count noun, since one could have said "there was urgency in his speeches".

Has "urgency" been used elsewhere as a count noun?

.....

from OED2:

II.  6. An urgent need or situation.
1647   T. May Hist. Parl. ii. i. 11   Collections through the Kingdom being too slow for such an urgency.
1695   J. Locke Further Consid. Value Money 58   The accidental difference‥is sometimes (but rarely) two pence in five shillings, or somewhat more in great urgencies.
1820   Keats Isabella in Lamia & Other Poems 63   With sudden speed,‥Because of some great urgency and need In their affairs.
1832   Rolls of Parl. Index 467/2   Agrees to respite the Levy‥for Two Years,‥unless any Urgency should arise.

7. A driving or constraining impulse or motive.
1664   H. More Modest Enq. Myst. Iniquity xx. 76   Pinched betwixt the sense of poverty and quick urgencies of Devotion.
1822   J. M. Good Study Med. I. 343   The patient‥will still perhaps be tormented with‥a perpetual urgency to expulsion.
c1830   T. Chalmers Lect. Rom. (1840) lxix. 346   Evil might ensue from unbridled and unreasonable urgencies of talk upon this subject.
1883   D. C. Murray Hearts viii,   A superstitious reverence for his guest's genius, and its various urgencies.

8. pl. Earnest representations or entreaties; importunities.
1823   T. Jefferson Writings (1830) IV. 376   We..met, and after the urgencies of each on the other, I consented to undertake the task.
1877   ‘H. A. Page’ T. De Quincey: Life & Writings II. xvii. 40   Books..to be returned, in answer to the urgencies of librarians.
1883   R. Broughton Belinda II. iii. v. 254   Belinda,..despite the warm urgencies of the..strangers, retires in favour of her visitors.

....

this doesn't have the count noun "urgency" related to "emergency" and to "urgent care facility", however.

arnold

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