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.”