Taste The Hysteria

 

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE FUN THIS YEAR

THAN COVID-19??

The hysteria surrounding this new virus is like a tonic to me. 

>> Someone told me the other day that because she has asthma, when she catches it she doesn't have a chance.  When, not if.  She's a NURSE for fuck's sake.  Stop whining and wash your hands!

>> Someone else I know was hyperventilating about how Captain Trips is REALLY FINALLY HERE, OMG OMG.  Um, no.  Captain Trips, aka tube-neck, aka superflu, aka the Blue virus, killed every single infected person on earth -- 99.4% of the human population -- in the space of a month or so.    While this does have a superflu  feel to it in some ways, most people survive it handily.  Sorry, Charlie.

>  I admit I am intrigued by the way you can get COVID-19, recover, then catch it again.  That sure does sound like Captain Trips. 

>> The infectious-disease specialists are talking about "cytokine storms" shutting down the lungs of the COVID-19 patients who die.  That is what they always say about the Spanish Flu that killed 100 million people back at the end of the Great War, but my eager reading about that virus revealed that it's probably just speculation.  Nobody seems to have actually tracked it down, let alone cultured and studied that virus successfully.  But even if that's true, Spanish Flu preferentially killed healthy adults between 20 and 40.  COVID-19 is doing the usual viral song and dance of killing the chronically ill and elderly.

>> So maybe the people who ought to be panicking in the streets are Trump voters?

>> Someone else announced on a message board recently that the disease was deliberately engineered by the New World Order to KILL US ALL and it is the DEADLIEST DISEASE EVER FOUND.  Dude, are you serial?   Take this paper bag and breathe into it, will you?  Let me also point out that the fatality rate even in the patients made critically ill by the virus is under 50% -- and only 2.3% of ALL patients die.  It may be even lower than that when you count people who got it, but have symptoms too mild to mention to anybody.

>> Since I wrote the bullet point above, the World Health Organization adjusted the mortality figures to 3.4%.  That's still not Captain Trips by a long shot.  I have been unable to find an article that says 3.4% of who, exactly, but I assume they mean 3.4% of reported cases that were definitely COVID-19.

>> Any hysteric worth his salt would be sure to point out about here that  a mortality rate of 3.4% is THREE AND A HALF TIMES AS DEADLY AS SEASONAL FLU.  Yes.  But when is the last time anyone got panicky about flu season, which is happening right now and this year is FAR worse than average, with multiple strains keeping people sick in bed for up to 4 weeks and schools shutting down because all the staff and students are sick?  I don't see anyone rioting in the streets about it.

>>  About the New World Order thing: If COVID-19 is engineered to kill us all and everyone's dead, what is there left to take over? 

In honor of this crisis I renewed my search for the full-length version of a 1980 movie about a killer pandemic called Virus.  I have only been able to find the cut-down, 103-minute version in the past and wanted to see the 2-hours-and-36-minutes-long version for the first time.  This time I stumbled across the fact that the long version has a different title:  Resurrection Day. No wonder I've been stalled all this time.  It became the first movie on a phone download queue I created and I even went the extra mile and ordered one of those gadgets that makes your smartphone look as big as a TV screen so I can watch it in style.  Man, life is good sometimes.

I have heard that the air quality in China is so bad that it is now possible to buy a bottle of imported clean air so you can take a whiff of something other than smog.  My whiffing bottle has the clean, refreshing taste of PANDEMIC HYSTERIA.