When Did Avoiding The Plague Become Controversial?

Colour copper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr Beak], a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, published by Paul Fürst, ca. 1656. Public Domain Review. Additions mine

My friend has had COVID twice (he thinks three times). ‘Natural immunity’ just means being a sick a lot, and potentially giving yourself ‘pre-existing conditions’ which make it your fault if you die.

When people talk about ‘getting it over with’ it sounds nuts to me, but this attitude is all over the white media. Highly paid dudes with triple shots, working from home, with access to testing and sick leave, they’re like “we’re all going to get it, I want to go to restaurants now.” In this day and age, if you’re still trying to avoid the plague, you’re the crazy one.

If COVID was Ebola would we just be living with it? In the largest Ebola outbreak 11,300 people died, which is happening every week in America alone. Would it be different if COVID caused more bleeding? Would people fear it then? Would it make a difference to the living? Because it makes no difference to the dead.

I remember when the outbreak started and people said it was ‘just the flu’ and we had to have that exhausting debate. We had to scream that, no, this is going to kill millions of people and it could kill you. Now over 5.7 million people are confirmed dead and we’re having the same fucking debate again. People are like “well yeah, but those people are already dead, this new variant is just the flu.”

First off, millions of dead people from the 1918 flu would like to have a word. Are people going to be saying, ‘it’s just the coronavirus’ for the plague of 2120? I’ll fucking haunt them if they do.

Second off, the Omicron is only ‘milder’ than Delta, whatever the fuck that means. It’s not in any way ‘milder’ than the original strain, and is many times more contagious. And it reinfects people. Omicron in every way more terrifying than the thing we were terrified about two years ago, but people are like “yeah, but it’s not as bad as Delta.”

This is like getting hit by a car, getting hit by a bus, and then being happy about getting hit by another car. It’s positively deranged.

COVID-19 is turning out ‘like the flu’ in that it keeps mutating, reinfecting people, and requiring new booster shots every year. Meanwhile over 3 billion people have no shots at all, and seemingly never will, because White Empire is treating mRNA technology like nuclear weapons, forcing us to reverse engineer this shit, burning time we don’t have.

This thing could have been stopped at any point (like China did) but White Empire wasted so much time debating about whether it was serious and then, once that was obvious, said it was then too serious to do anything about.

Giving up became the reason that you have to give up, while millions of people gave up the ghost. While tens of millions of families are shattered. While children become orphans, and tens of millions of people become disabled. While the real economy falls apart, while rich people point to lines on a chart.

And then the most privileged people in the world, who have the luxury to write Op-Eds about this shit, declare it over because they’re tired of wiping down packages and covering their mouths. The corporate media does the dirty work of corporations that just want everyone back to work.

The say is ‘avoid it like the plague’ but that’s obviously a joke. The only thing White Empire avoids is doing any public health work. When China beat this thing, but the western media just made fun of them for doing their homework.

It’s like, how fucking old are we? The cool, rich kids are in the back of class snickering and making fun of the nerds. Then they go home and kill grandma. When I was in high school I thought the adult world would be serious, but no, the adult world is worse.

Honestly, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t even debate people anymore. It’s not their fault. We’ve been willfully torn apart. Saying ‘I just want to get it’ is really a coping mechanism. What’s left but gallows humor among those left to hang?

But the uncomfortable, terrifying truth is still this.

COVID-19 is a bad disease, even if it doesn’t make you bleed, it can leave you on your knees. COVID-19 is an unknown disease, we don’t know how long or how strong the effects will be. Finally, COVID-19 is an avoidable disease. We could have avoided it like the plague, but people decided that all the world’s a stage, and everyone needs to have a fucking opinion.

And so, to mangle the bard, ‘Thus never-ends this strange eventful history,
In second childishness and mere oblivion.’