A Year of Covid-19

By this week, it’s been about a year since the Wuhan Virus struck my shores up in the Norse part of the world. A year of isolation, turbulence, and further deterioration of the quality of the public discourse. We joked back in 2016 that we’d cross out that year from our calendars. How innocent we were. Sweet summer children…

So, while we’re (supposed to be) cooped up in our homes and general vicinities, holding on hope that this angel of death is going to pass us by soon, why don’t we take a moment to set up a sort of disclaimer. A short-hand for dealing with the global pandemic, if you will…

First off; the vaccines work. Just not like you think they do. Vaccines have never been guarantee. They’re a hurdle for infectious disease. Sometimes, even oft-times, a big enough hurdle to kill its onslaught. A vaccine is a wave-breaker. And if you’re given the chance, if you’re next up on the rooster, you should probably take it (barring medical complications or conditions that could severely affect you in a bad way). And remember that taking the vaccines is not just your potential subjective benefit. It’s for the benefit of your community. Your family. Don’t be an obstinate ass-hat.

Secondly; Stop bitching about it morphing your DNA. If you’re whining about your precious gene-sequence being corrupted, odds are it’s not a very precious gene pool to begin with. Plenty of vaccines re-work the DNA in subtle ways by introducing modified mRNA to the mix. You can’t get antibodies or T-cells without setting up some factories for them. And you can’t set up factories without supplying some plans. That’s what the mRNA vaccines do. They don’t fuck up our gene pool any worse than your mother-aunt already has. So shut up.

Thirdly; side-effects are sadly an inevitability with vaccines. The faster the production, the shorter the testing, the more there’ll be. But most bad side-effects are statistically non-existent. Trouble is, when you are to vaccinate billions of people, even statistical irrelevancies become practical certainty. That’s just how statistics work. And seeing as most human beings are practically incapable of measuring or judging odds and chances, just don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it, because you’re not equipped to.

Fourthly; a lot of hate is being levied against medical professionals, infectious disease doctors, and even vaccine coordinators. If you’re one of the haters; fuck you. Fuck you sideways. These people, to the best of our knowledge, work to the the best of their abilities to save people’s lives. The vast majority of them aren’t trying to screw you over for some twisted political agenda. They are trying their best to navigate medical assistance through a web of laws, bureaucracy, disingenuous and signal politics, and hate-guzzling trolls to save our fucking lives. By any conceivable meritocratic metric, they know what they’re doing a hell of a lot better than you do. Here’s an idea for a benchmark: If you can’t fathom the proper use of a period to clip a sentence, or if you think that multiple exclamation marks is valid for anything but comic relief, don’t think you’re intelligent enough to validly criticize public health workers that are slavering away through the worst conditions of their careers to save your life. You don’t have the cognitive capacity or validity to criticize them. Just a bunch of misaligned hate and self-loathing. Go dig a pit and stay there until the coast is clear, you fucking hate-monger.

Fifthly; masks have become a contentious topic. Mostly in the binary US. Over there, you’re either a sheep or a malicious culprit, depending on where you lean on the political spectrum. But from what I’ve seen during my work commute or on the news, people aren’t capable of wearing the masks properly. From interviews I’ve had with doctors, masks were discussed to be scrapped as unreliable even in the controlled settings of most surgeries before the pandemic hit. Odds are, in the microbial chaos of everyday life, outside of a controlled environment, masks are ineffective at best. At worst, a false safety blanket, that let people rationalize going out unnecessarily. However, we’ve also seen that people aren’t getting infected on the, for example, public transport system where masks have been mandated. Either way, the masks aren’t going to single-handedly save you, and they’re not so fucking important as to justify a civil war. Get a fucking grip.

Which brings us to the next point…

Sixth; though the masks won’t save you, social distancing still might. During the Christmas holidays, the ski slopes of northern Sweden were full of privileged fucking morons. A sad fact that prompted extra measures to be taken to withstand a second… third… I lose track; another wave. So keep distancing yourself! Don’t go to fucking Mexico, for example, just because you want to look for Coco, or because you can’t stand your daughters enough to keep them in the house for a week. Stay in your cave, you fucking troglodytes!

Seventh; even during the Spanish flu pandemic, beginning at the ass end of the first world war, the disease was politicized. The very reason that it is now called ‘the Spanish flu’ isn’t because it began in Spain, but because Spain couldn’t silence reports on it. For all we know, the first deadly outbreak of that strain happened in Kansas, in troop camps awaiting orders to ship to Europe. And with the liberating troops finally on the shores, the disease spread. And no one wanted to acknowledge it in fear of demoralizing the population. So even though it’s natural for nations to politicise a pandemic, don’t play along, you muppets.

Eight; because that being said, China seems particularly wild in shifting blame for the pandemic eruption. According to them it’s either India, or the US, it’s the Australians that exported the virus to China (according to frenzied attempts to obfuscate by Chinese state media). Bears to note that all three countries have been in recent conflicts, both violent and diplomatic, with the Chinese People’s Empire. Make of that what you will…

Ninth; it’s not over. The Spanish flu stuck around for three years. Hopefully, we’ve gotten better at dealing with vaccinations and preventative measures in the hundred years since. But odds are, 2021 won’t see us quite back to normal, and we’re quite simply going to have to accept that. I know; it sucks. But it is what it is.

/Sebastian Lindberg 23/2-2021