Reading the news every day is a good habit, but sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard because you have other things to do. Sometimes it’s hard because you slept in. And sometimes it’s hard because the news is about how there’s death disease all around us. So around us that the person next to you might have it and be giving it to you right now. So around us that you might already have it and be dead before you get to eat the microwave lasagna that’s drawing you through the morning and supposed to hold you over until dinner.
Well, here’s some terrible news: the bird flu is back. This was terrible news for the three birds in Hong Kong who got it in December, as well as all the birds who had to die just in case. It was terrible news for the man in Shenzhen who died without even getting near the bird flu zone. That’s the problem with bird flu: birds fly everywhere. If one flies overhead, and it’s got flu on it, the flu could easily drop down on you. And then chances are you’ll die, because that’s usually what happens when you get bird flu.
Bird flu is just one of many flus we should be afraid of, because flus are caused by viruses, and viruses are out to kill. I’m not a biologist, but here’s what I know about viruses: they are little bitty things with metal heads and spiky bodies who need our bodies to perpetuate their shitty race. Now, it might not be a shitty race. Viruses could have little virus civilizations. There could be a virus Mozart that we’ll never hear and a virus Picasso we’ll never see because we’re too big. If the earth has a consciousness, it probably thinks of us as little nogoodniks with nothing to offer. But I’m calling the virus race shitty because the advancement of the virus race means the eradication of ours, or at least giant swaths of it at a time.
When the virus race makes great strides, establishing great virus civilizations, it’s called a pandemic, and loads of people have to die. Sometimes they die from bleeding out of every hole on their body. Other times they die from withering up like blistered prunes. Often they die because their lungs rot down into wrinkled pouches that couldn’t hold beach sand. In every case, viruses climbed up into the person’s body and raped all their cells. There are probably things humans do that look similar from a distance, but the viruses are still not getting any empathy from me.
Of all the terrible things that could happen in my lifetime, pandemics scare me the worst. Not just because I don’t want to die, but because after death is probably nothing, so the way you are before you die is really important. In a pandemic, almost everyone is a murderer before they die, because before they died they served as virus guns. And almost everyone has to die having seen their loved ones die, most likely screaming and pulling at their skin behind a glass divider, until men in Michelin Man outfits draw the curtains so no one healthy has to see what comes next.
Even this is optimistic. In reality no one goes down to the death centre to see their loved ones dying. In a pandemic, everyone is looking out for number one. Pandemics create a war between the healthy and unhealthy. When people start showing signs of sickness, the healthy barricade them in closets and run away, leaving them to die alone and in agonizing pain. The joke’s on the healthy, because they’re probably already dead. When death finally arrives, they’ll remember the family members they abandoned, and go out in that much more pain.
Since viruses are small, no one knows who’s got virus on them. Since no one knows for sure who’s healthy and who’s sick, no one trusts anyone. You’d better be careful how you drink water in a pandemic, because if it goes down the wrong way and you cough, it’s lights out. If your loved ones don’t barricade you in a closet, the Michelin Men in charge of virus control will throw you in a pit with all the other sick people that no one knows what to do with. If you were healthy to begin with, you’ll definitely get sick down there. You will die imagining your loved ones dying, while someone in agonizing pain screams in your face that he’s dying. He doesn’t even care that you’re dying too.
God forbid you cough around people who don’t love you, because they’ll probably impale you as punishment for infecting them, which you didn’t even.
The Michelin Men wield a ton of power in a pandemic. Since they’re in Michelin suits, they can’t get sick, but they’re in charge of everyone who is sick, and people who are sick can’t defend themselves. All it takes is a few bad apples to corrupt the entire force. Corruption is easy in a pandemic because all everyone knows is death. After a month of pandemic, no one can even remember health and prosperity. A month into a pandemic, and the Michelin Men are playing soccer with people’s heads and staging tea parties with their bodies. The dead don’t know this is happening, but once stories start leaking to the press, their loved ones will. They’ll know it until they die, too, either alone in a closet or in a pit or behind a glass divider, before the Michelin Men draw the curtain.
Even if you’re smart and buy a cottage and hoard lots of canned goods and learn how to shoot a gun before the pandemic really gets going, you’re going to get a mean case of cabin fever. And then you’re no better off than the poor souls trapped in cities, because the birds flying overhead could have flu on them, and as soon as someone coughs everyone’s locked in a closet and either dying in agonizing pain or dying of starvation, which is also agonizing.
But I am an optimist and, I hope, a doer rather than a whiner. So when the pandemic happens, I am going to lock myself in my apartment and watch Youtube tutorials for things I never thought I’d have time to learn.
Alexandra Molotkow writes Toronto Standard’s Minutiae column.
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