Thirty Questions You Totally Shouldn't Be Asking

Here you go, straight from Conspiracy Central: thirty loaded questions about the pandemic that "people should be asking themselves," most of them heavily implying something sinister is afoot, something we need to get to the bottom of. I admit it: I read all thirty. I'm not making these up. And the reason I'm not asking myself these questions is I already know the answers. So obviously I'm just the person to clear up this crap before it goes coronaviral. Ready?

4. Why should you stay inside but yet heat and sunlight kill the virus? You, in particular, should stay inside so you can read up on how things work. But no one is telling anyone to stay inside. Get on out there, Petunia! Get some fresh air! Sunlight plus time is a disinfectant, so you can leave a plastic bin, for instance, outside for a few days and there shouldn't be any virus on it. If you leave your personal self outside for a few days and stay real still and don't move and don't touch any orifices, yours or a friend's, probably people could lay a finger right on you and not get a virus. Try not to breathe on them though.

5. Why can't kids (who are not at high risk) play on an outdoor playground, where sun kills this virus? Okay. Sure! Let the little buggers play on the playground! Kids are famous for not touching each other or bunching up or getting each other smeary or leaking fluids out of their orifices, so everything should be just fine, as long as one of them hasn't acquired the virus somewhere else! They wouldn't, like, share the playground equipment, would they? Or laugh, or talk, or shriek, or snot on things? Then they're good to go. Oh, that high risk bit? Your kids can get real sick too, but you're right, it's mainly Grandma we're protecting by trying to contain this thing. Although another way to go might be to have the oldsters laminated and park them in the basement. Send down a bucket of creamed peas and a fruit cup every few days.

7. Why is it okay for government officials to get a haircut, but not common citizens? Really? This is a thing? You mean government officials like the President? That's not a haircut, that's an installation. I'm guessing no "government official," whatever you mean by that, is getting a haircut unless they have someone who lives with them cutting their hair, or unless they're stupid or vain. Same as "common citizens."

8. Why the fear, when this virus has less than a 1% death rate? This virus is so new and so little data have been gathered that no one really knows the mortality rate yet, although it's generally pegged at over 1%. I guess we can only speak for ourselves on this one. The death rate for people in my age group is more like 4-11%, and it's not a nice death, and you get to die alone. I don't want it. Also, if my chances of getting killed in a car were one in a hundred trips, I wouldn't get in a car. You go ahead on, though, you tiger, you!

9. Why are areas like Chicago and New York gearing up for mass vaccination? Because they're smart and well-run.

11. Doesn't shelter in home mean there is a whole population of people not staying home so we can? Excellent question. Yes.

12. Why are they dividing us? Another good question. Wait. Who are you calling "they?"

13. How do people not know that we are a Republic, not a democracy? Huh. A little off-topic, there. I'm going with "nobody learns anything in school anymore," because as an Oldster I certainly know that we are a republic, meaning we elect our own representatives to legislate, rather than just everybody voting on every little thing all the time and seeing what shakes out. We are also a democracy, in that we democratically elect our representatives. I'm going out on a limb here, but something about your question makes me suspect you don't know any of this, but think this has something to do with our two major parties?

14. Where has the flu gone? Oo! Oo! I know this one. Bill Gates had the flu shipped out for the warmer months per his usual schedule and will have it re-installed next October, just in time to terrify people into accepting his vaccines, through which he intends to microchip everyone in the world, and then do, well, I don't know what. Something sneaky.

15. Why do the homeless consistently demonstrate the lowest infection rate? They don't. Jesus.

17. Why are they telling us to mask up after two months of lockdown? Really? Uh, because we still have no cure or vaccine for a dangerous and highly infectious disease. I'm not sure you're paying attention.

21. Why are the common people being controlled by government and no one is controlling the government? Hey, I've got one for you. What the hell is wrong with you?

23. Why are some doctors speaking out and then getting silenced? You mean Dr. Fauci?

25. What does a computer geek have to do with a pandemic and why does he want 7 billion coronavirus vaccines? He's a humanitarian.

28. Why did Dr. Fauci say in 2017 that there would be a "SURPRISE PANDEMIC" and then runs the pandemic team? Same answer, both clauses: because he is an expert on pandemics.

29. Why are they infringing on Christians [sic] freedoms? Whuh? Who? They who? Calm down.

And just for fun, let's go back to #3, which we skipped earlier.

3. Why can't you have an elective surgery, but you can have an abortion which is elective? Elective surgeries are those that are either unnecessary (like cosmetic surgery) or that can be reasonably postponed. Abortions, whether medically necessary or legally requested, cannot be reasonably postponed. This question doesn't seem to have much to do with our pandemic response. It feels more like a sniper shot from the Pro-Life movement, herein defined as a group advocating for the right to life for humans from blob till birth, and for a while after that, with exceptions for capital punishment, war, famine, black people running around blackly where they don't belong, and of course people over 65 during a dangerous pandemic.

Don't Try This At Home

Two weeks ago Dave brought home a cough, not that we needed one. It was pretty annoying. To him, probably, too. Mine came in a few days later and before long we sounded like the TB ward. Nothing dry about the cough, either. It was long and juicy, chest-deep, and tailed off like cans rattling behind the Trans-Am at your cousin's wedding.

That was entertaining for a few days and then we peeled off into specialties. I got head congestion resembling concrete for a day or two and then it subsided into something blowable. So that was an improvement. I developed an odd, rippling, lackadaisical, old-lady flatulence that (since I was eating nothing) I put down to my gut bacteria working over the gallons of phlegm I was swallowing. And then, a week in, and rather abruptly, and after noticing that I was on the floor for some reason, I realized I needed to get into a more comfortable position from which I was unlikely to fall further. I threw kibble at the cat without even making her roll over for it and got into bed.

I don't know what my temperature was. The next morning, which arrived against all odds, I felt pretty decent and took my temperature, and it was above 101. So I'm pegging the previous night at 109. I got up a few times in the night and ricocheted all the way to the bathroom on spherical feet. I had it together just enough to assemble a wastebasket in front of the toilet but I couldn't work out the essential problem: if I was going to throw up and I was going to faint, didn't it matter which order I did those in? I was pretty sure it mattered.

Somehow I got back to bed using a path that would be represented in The Family Circus by hyphens, and continued enjoying my fever. I  was engaged in the endless arrangement and re-arrangement of blocks of type from the Gutenberg era, and the lighting wasn't good. Chinkity chinkity chunk. Chinkity chinkity chinkity chunk. Periodically red lights would appear. They would invariably turn out to be eyeshine from the left eyeball of someone quite recognizable. Rasputin. Katie Couric.

The upside of the delirium was I didn't have to hear Dave cough. Since he had never worked up much in the way of a fever--a brief flirtation with 99--he had decided to double down on the coughing. Now he spent every night and much of the day working out phlegm, chunks of lung tissue, vermin, items of furniture, and the like, culminating in a little sob. He'd pared his sleeping time down to nothing. I was sleeping twenty hours a day. Whereas before we had been able to take turns doing each other the occasional small favor--a plate of sliced apples here, a poached egg there, a refill on the vaporizer--now we peered at each other with quelling hostility lest the other deign to ask for something.

My coughing could not compete with Dave's in degree of difficulty or style points, but it was still plenty persistent. By the third day of my 102+ fevers, I began to feel my ribs snap, one by one. One of them poked all the way through the skin, but it was in the back so it didn't show. A friend came by, flang rescue groceries onto the porch, and peeled away from the curb with a honk.

I'm pretty sure Googling the symptoms of Ebola is one of the symptoms of Ebola.

That night I abandoned the type rearrangement project and instead examined busy little white strands of DNA, masses of them, motoring away on the world's ceiling six inches above my head like processionary caterpillars. Later I couldn't remember if I was making boulders or little haystacks, so made little progress. I woke up with my face sealed shut. My eyes were breaded and I spent the morning chiseling away at a new cement installation around my nostrils.

And I discovered that the entire inside of my face now tasted and smelled like nothing I had ever encountered before. But it wasn't anything you'd associate with a person who's still alive. I went to our doctor. She confirmed I had the flu.

"I don't get the flu," I explained patiently. "I've never gotten the flu."

Did you get the flu shot?

"I did get the flu shot."

Oh, that's right. This year's flu shot didn't target this year's flu.

But I had a deal. The deal was, I get strep throat and everyone else gets the flu. I'm the strep queen. I might have had it thirty times. You feel like shit for two days, you go to the doctor, you get a bunch of pills, you start to feel better. I was happy to take the strep throat burden off my fellow citizens. Proud, even. But this--this is bullshit. This is the stupidest idea ever. There is no point to it.

I'm home now enjoying my recovery, with a few new features. My ears finally got off the train and said they'd check back with me in a few stations. Every time I lie down I hear doughboys marching endlessly in the snow in the trenches where they used to be. I feel like shit. But now it's shit I can see over. A few days from now, I hope, I'll be able to cremate the bed linens and start anew.