Life of COVID – A “Biodrama”

Oh, how the world has changed. It felt like we were just enjoying our lives, a week ago and now we have people hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer due to the Covid pandemic. It just shows how quickly life can change. I hope that you all are finding ways to cope with the anxiety and depression that comes with the unknown.

I ‘m following the CDC Coronavirus Protocol by practicing social distancing and self-quarantine at home. I know that I am not alone in this… but I’m haunted by the thought that I will not be able to get Froyo for a long time. I’m proud to know that I am doing my part of fighting against this pandemic. While I’m stuck in my house, my friend Peter Whyte sent me a story that I loved and I’d like to share it with you all. Enjoy and don’t forget to wash your hands!

Life of COVID – A “Biodrama”

By Peter Whyte

Hi there, my name is COVID and I am 19 today. I am currently in Wuhan, China, a city of eleven million humans and untold billions of my relatives. Wutan is in close proximity to an even bigger city, Beijing, which is double the population, at 21.6 million. 

Me and my many cousins have traveled all around the world for possibly a thousand years or more, so pinning down our real origin is nearly impossible. In fact, the last time we were seen was 1918 in Spain. What a mess that turned out to be. The “Spanish flu” as it was called, killed about 50 million humans, but the truth is about 90% of the infected died of a follow-on bacterial infection which they got being sick from having the flu. Had antibacterial agents been discovered the death toll would have been more like five million, or less, but a hundred years ago nobody knew much about bacteria and how to treat bacterial infections.

Researchers are debating whether or not my cousins and I are technically “alive.” I guess it depends on one’s definition of what “alive” is. I am present, and I can move, albeit to prey on mammalian cells. But I am lifeless? For something that is not alive we sure cause a lot of havoc. When we feed on human or other mammalian cells, extracting what we need to survive, only then are we considered to be alive.

I know DNA joining with RNA has a lot to do with it. Who knows, maybe the CIA and AAA are involved. There is so much I don’t understand about my life or lack of it.   

I know the COVID Clan are real movers and shakers. Sometimes I feel a bit like Boxcar Willie, hitching rides on anything that moves, and we’re not fussy about which direction we’re going in. We’re very open-minded, er, wait, no, that can’t be right. No life, no brain equals no mind, right? AND NO CONSCIENCE either.

Something moves us though, or should I say, compels us…………but it’s too much for me to ponder.

I arrived here in Wutan from Singapore by plane, on the lapel of a cute flight attendant, who will get the sniffles in about ten days or so. The ride was smooth and we were “free to move about the cabin,“ said the captain, so I did. I actually fell off some luggage being stored in the overhead bin. I fell right onto the flight attendant’s lapel. Ya, we get around. It was a long trip but we get there eventually. 

Speaking of urges, in the time it took you to open Google maps and find out where Singapore is, some strange urge made me ride a little breeze and hop onto a pallet of plastic products being shipped to America. I can’t see through the plastic to see the products inside, but I think they are toys headed for … … … … …. Kirkland, Washington. Apparently, there is a big distribution center there that moves products out to the rest of the country. I think I heard something to the effect that this palette would be dismantled and some of the toys would go to Orange County and the rest to Mexico. 

What usually happens at the distribution center is, the palette of products gets disassembled and anything staying locally placed in a spot in one of the big isles they have in the stores. Then humans purchase the products for their human kids, toys in this case, who play with them for about two minutes before handing it off to the family dog, who then chews the toy up, slobbers all over it and drops it at the foot of the mother human who is carrying a screaming baby. The baby is crying and struggling to get down from its mother. The mother reaches down, picks up the chewed toy, and hands it to the baby which pacifies the little one, but also completes a COVID-19 triple play, three humans infected with one toy. And, humans are the ones running the planet?

My time on the palette headed for Kirkland is not wasted. It’s a long flight in this storage area onboard the plan so I keep busy pushing out replicas by the millions on a good night. I will have millions of new COVID cousins by the time we land, and those replicants will, in turn, replicate millions more COVID cousins, who will do the same thing the previous generation did – make more COVID family members.

I am told that for most of our existence COVIDS didn’t have the ability to ride a human and bring it to its knees. We could ride and find compatible pigs, ducks, chickens, bats, and monkeys, but we couldn’t find common ground with humans. 

One day, back in Wutan a distant cousin was “hatched” with what looked like a body extension or third arm. This mutant COVID looked funny to the rest of my family until cuz’ jumped the oldest human kid of the family that tended the livestock at the farm in Wutan.  And guess what, it was the third arm that got him onto that human kid. My cousin must have got an extra leg, not an arm. I am sorry to report however that in this fast-moving world that “COVID the mutant” was eradicated soon thereafter when a human washed down some space in the yard where my cousin just happened to be. Cousin COVID the mutant was gone in an instant with a big splash of Clorox, which incidentally came from a store named Costco in Kirkland, Washington. Fiction? I think not.

So, it appears our kind can “adapt” given the right amount of time and an infinite number of coding errors. And, here I thought mother nature was a perfectionist. It looks like imperfection helps us adapt to new circumstances just as well as perfection.  Wow, getting CREDIT for mistakes. We should definitely be running this planet with logic like that, not the humans.

OK, a short recap. I arrived in China from Singapore on the lapel of a human, who takes off the jacket and lays it down on a palette of mass-manufactured toys. The palette heads for Kirkland with me aboard. Instead of just sitting there on the palette, I watch millions of offspring, all able to jump a human. I am currently on a shelf in a Costco store in Mexico City. I hitched another ride of course. I am down a row from my cousin who is just outside the bakery. 

Through the grapevine, I heard that one of the Costco bakers came down with influenza, who are another branch of the family, not bakers, influenza.  Apparently, the baker sneezed on some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and was ordered to toss them all out. At that same time my ‘Cuz, who watched this whole event, who had parked himself on the shelf adjacent to the bakery, was staying busy, producing another million cousins. By some DNA transposition error, the recipe for all of this cousin’s immediate kin got many errors and turned the offspring into real “bad actors” whose mutation from the original DNA schema makes them very deadly to humans and capable of just about anything. 

Meanwhile, a man takes a moment for himself and grabs a seat at a little Mexican café in Mexico City. Dressed in uniform it is obvious that he is an airline pilot. Little did he know what he had delivered to Mexico City today.  

A long trip and a hot day had left him parched. He’s had cold beer on his mind. A waiter approaches the pilot, who is carrying a toy for his daughter he just purchased a local Costco store.  The waiter requests, “what kind of beer would you like today amigo.” “Una Corona cervesa por favor Signore” says the man. Corona, eh. The plot thickens.

The waiter brings the Corona and the pilot slowly guzzling down the cold, cold beer. He isn’t alone drinking that beer though. Those most lips were the perfect place to hop into his mouth so we can then make it into his lungs.

In a few minutes, he will greet his daughter who he sees in the distance walking hand in hand with her nanny, toward him. He stands waiting to give her a big “I have missed you kiss.” We will be there for that one too, and we now have a new little girl in the family, well, for as long as she lasts anyway. 

Not nearly The End, but enough. I sure hope this story goes VIRAL, get it?