A letter from the virus to the President of the United States

To: The most powerful human being

From: The most powerful threat to human beings

Dear Mr. President,

We would like to thank you for three months of valuable delay, and now for your efforts to open things up quickly through the ‘big bang’ plan. You have been a constant friend.

After we first started infecting humans, initially in Wuhan late last year, we were expecting you to prepare a war against us to protect your fellow human beings. Indeed, as the most powerful member of the Homo Sapiens species, we did not expect anything less.

Instead, you decided to help us viruses by playing down the threat. You owed us nothing, and human beings everything. We don’t understand why you were on our side, despite knowing it would result in so many deaths of your own people.

You didn’t just procrastinate, but actively put out false hope and false information. You lied on behalf of a virus.

On 2 February, you said, “We pretty much shut it down,” although you had done nothing to worry us.

Then, on 14 February, referring to hot weather, you said, “historically that has been able to kill the virus,” although we had never enjoyed a summer with human hosts.

After we killed many people in China and started to spread to other countries, you kept on pretending you had us under control. On 26 February, you announced that the fifteen Americans you claim we had infected “in a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” although the statistics showed we were on a rising trend. On the same day, you said, “It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for,” although everyone knew we were much stronger and that there wasn’t a vaccine.

Your cocktail of lying and inspiring was particularly delicious when, the following day, you added, “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

We remember this period of misdirection and misinformation so well that it has become Covid folklore, handed down from generation to generation. Although we reproduce fast, that doesn’t mean we’ll ever forget kindness shown by another species. Congratulations on being the first host to welcome a parasite on this scale in the history of the world.

We admired your chutzpah in looking into the cameras and lying for us. Mr. President, you really have been the perfect host.

We could never lie like that. We’re pretty straightforward as a species because our agenda is so obvious – to infect as many human beings as possible.

You then managed to buy us more infection time, with distraction after distraction. You used the ban of flights from China to pretend that America was safe while we were busily ramping up in dozens of countries including the United States. You confused people by continuing to claim vaccines were around the corner that were going to take ages to be ready, and by talking up drugs that were unproven.

When the facts about our threat became beyond obvious, you changed gear and said the facts were fake. Making our threat fake only helped our threat become more real.

We were so lucky you had spent years honing your fake news technique as the father of the post-truth era – so you could then deploy it just when we needed it.

Your masterstroke against your own people was in suggesting we didn’t even exist – that we were a “democratic conspiracy”. There’s nothing a virus appreciates more than going viral as a conspiracy theory.

When the music did finally stop, and governors started locking down different states of their own accord, we resigned ourselves to facing the full force of the United States.

However, you went back to battle for us. Unable to hide our threat any longer, you spun it around by saying we were so threatening that mitigating such a threat would destroy the US economy: “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem.”

You had transformed an all-out attack on your species into a trade-off decision. That presented no trade-off to us, just pure upside: more delay to infect more Americans.

Then, invoking religious sentiments, you justified a ridiculously early Easter date for release of lockdowns by calling it “a beautiful time”. It certainly sounded very beautiful to us.

You delayed until 2 April before using the Defense Production Act for mask production. We particularly appreciate this product being delayed because, unlike your action on ventilators a week earlier, masks can directly impact our ability to spread.

Your use of “big bang” to promote early re-opening of the economy is a welcome new ploy. If you can pull it off, it would indeed be a big bang for us.

We notice that Fauci has been getting on your nerves and are pleased to see you just re-tweeted a call to fire him. I can tell you, he gets on our nerves too.

You have time and again fulfilled our wildest dreams before we had them, and thanks to you we number in the trillions.

Without benefit or good reason, in the face of irrefutable facts and with the duty and opportunity to save your own species, you have procrastinated, downplayed, stonewalled, confused, waxed lyrical, lied and ‘fake news-ed’ to favor the very species intent on destroying your own.

Your support has been as remarkable as inexplicable.

Yours virally,

Covid-19

by Mark Dixon

markpdixon1@mac.com