👁️❤️ 😷

Right up to the end, there were people holding on to Covid like a failing marriage. They were putting in all the work, and no one else was responding.

Disregard their public panic attacks. Don't believe a word or tear. 2020-2022 was an absolute joy for the most dysfunctional people in America. They'll tell you they were miserable. That’s a lie. They loved it

Everyone with a fucked up life wanted this to go on forever. Loving Covid lockdowns and living a shitty life correlated like Al Pacino and yelling.

There were people who were genuinely terrified and eager to get through this and get back to normal. I'm not talking about those people. They were sincere, even if sometimes dramatic. This isn't about them. I'm talking about the fucked up people. The loose coalition of the dysfunctional.

They loved it. Don't listen to their lies. They loved it. They miss it. This was their time. And they can't wait for the next one.

The histrionics, hypochondriacs, and germaphobes never had it better. I mean the people who compromised their own immune systems by sterilizing every inch of their environments with chemicals before 2020. The people who act like ricin is lurking on every toilet seat. These are the people who gave their kids peanut allergies by not exposing them to peanuts at a young age, because they were afraid they might have a peanut allergy.*

Covid was the best thing that ever happened to them.

There was a real pandemic! We couldn't dismiss their neuroticism and roll our eyes. Oh no… not anymore. Covid created a scenario where we were all required to not just respect their fears, but to participate in them. We were compelled by common decency and force of law to encourage their delusions and accept their preferred solutions.

If they don't want to come near you because you might have a lethal disease, that's a good thing. If they demand that everyone washes their hands 40 times a day like they do, that's commendable. If they don't feel well today, no one asks them to show up to work, weddings, or… anything. Not only did we have to respect their nonsense, not only did we have to participate, we had to live like hypochondriacs. We had to become hypochondriacs. All of us.

It’s all been such a blessing for fucked up people. Not only do we all have to be tolerant of people’s mental dysfunction, we are mandated to be complicit in their pathology. An absolute joy for them, no doubt, to watch the sane have to remake the world into what the germaphobes always wanted it to be.

Like bootleggers and baptists, circumstances make strange coalitions. It's unfair to lay this all at the isopropyl-disinfected feet of the hypochondriacs.  There are plenty of others with their own reasons to want this to continue.

The lazy and shiftless got a year or more of paid vacation with OT, making more money than what they did when they worked. The people who hate their jobs got to pretend like they would go to work, if only this pesky pandemic would allow them to. Their natural predilection to doing nothing was an act of heroism. Ordering delivery and watching junk on Hulu for five hours was an act of civil responsibility. Their bravery saved our democracy. To quote Jeb Bush, "Please clap." If they didn't feel like spending that extra money on rent, well you're in luck, because landlords weren't allowed to kick people out and replace them with someone who would.

The iLatte class had the opportunity to be paid extra to live like the least impressive people in our society. The laborers didn’t, mind you. Not the people who work on their feet. No, those people had to go to work. The fast food fry cooks, truckers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers, contractors, nurses, and other people who work with their hands had to keep going. They were deemed "necessary." It makes you wonder what other words we have available to best describe everyone else? The people who live on tips, the waiters and strippers, don’t make that much money on paper. Not only were they not allowed work, they collected near-zero unemployment checks.

Perhaps it's a coincidence that the lockdown lifestylers didn’t feel any sorrow when religious buildings were shut down. “Listen, Rabbi, I know you think it’s important to continue your 3,000 year old tradition of reading the Torah parsha or whatever. Allow me to be your role model. Go home and watch Tiger King and eat Panda House delivery, like me.”

Which brings us to digital addicts. The people who are terminally online. The people who don’t see anything wrong with watching 14 hours of television a day. Don’t get confused. These people are addicts. Like any junkie, they are always on the run from their own mind, and the attention-robber barons of Hollywood and Silicon Valley have the cure for self-reflection and quiet. Now would be their big chance to finally launch their Twitch streaming career, I'm sure.

Who else? Who else wanted this to go on forever?

Well, there are ugly people. Who can forget them? With mask mandates, they can hide their faces. The women who put in hours every morning micromanaging every imperfection and blemish under an impressionist fresco of Maybelline products. Their work is simpler under the Covid regime. They slipped on a paper mask and their disguise was complete. They never have to worry about a spontaneous photo with other people that they are terribly unprepared for. People with fucked up teeth don't have to use their skills of hiding their grills with awkward, lip-sealed smiles or hands in front of their mouths.

Not far off from the uglies are the obese, now with a new and better excuse than ever before. “Everyone is putting on weight.” The fatties can pretend like it's normal. "It's just Covid weight." People who knew they needed to hit the gym were handed that convenient excuse, "I would go to the gym, but they are all closed, so I'm helpless to manage my own health so long as this pandemic continues." Thank you for your service. I only wish more Americans were brave enough to exacerbate the second most important risk-factor in Covid fatality rates.

Then there are the Peter Pans, the young people who are trying to put adulthood on hold indefinitely. The people who are on the other side thirty, or damn near it, who skipped every major life milestone The people who have been out of college for a decade and still put off marriage, kids, career, and responsibility for just one more year… and then just one more. The people who feel the emptiness that comes with not loving another person more than themselves. The dog moms. The Funko Pop enthusiasts. The Disney dames and Marvel men. The people who are terrified to confront the challenge of being responsible for other people because they can’t even get it together for themselves. The lost generation who don't realize that people put themselves together for others because they have to.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who actually knows any teachers,  they—more than anyone—absolutely loathe their jobs and resent their clients. Acting in the best interest of their due-givers, the unions have done everything in their power to put as much distance between teachers and their students as humanly possible. They’ve removed any responsibility teachers once had for managing a classroom or putting on pants before speaking to children. It really puts everything into sharp focus, doesn’t it? Without schools, we saw that the real purpose of schools is to babysit children so both parents can go to work.

Certainly the journalists loved it. Or rather, the people who pay journalists to write on topics assigned to them by Google analytics’ list of trending keyword. They couldn't talk about anything else. The 4th estate who courageously write truth-to-power articles about how Bowser is probably transgender and should amputate his secondary sex characteristics because the keywords “nonbinary” and “Nintendo” are getting high engagement numbers on Twitter. These are the very serious people who showed a constant grisly death count at all times, ticking upwards like the old fundraising drives on television. If we reach 2 million dead, you'll get a free tote bag with NPR's logo on it so the bagger at Whole Foods knows that you’re deeply uninformed while they/them bags your organic oat milk.

The most blatantly enthusiastic are the personality disordered. I mean the shriekers, the borderlines, the micro-tyrants, the Karens and the HOA Stazi—whatever you want to call them. They could finally live in the Soviet snitch society they always dreamed of. At long last, they can make a scene in public and be a hero (instead of being forcefully removed by law enforcement).

These virus vigilantes took to the Walmarts of America, delivering street justice with the point-and-shriek method of social enforcement popularized by the pod people of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Not only were they not embarrassed by it, they proudly shared videos of themselves doing it. They lived to quote the CDC’s own Malleus Maleficarum to strangers, “The power of Science™ compels you!” as they flick droplets of isopropyl holy water at a guy just trying to fill his basket with BOGO hotdogs.

And for the people who are at risk because of pre-existing conditions, because of real health risks, the people who are in real danger of dying, I haven't forgotten about you. By now you are probably octuple-vaxxed, and if you have faith in the vaccines, you shouldn’t worry too much. I do have a few recommendations. You should cut your weight, get exercise, consume plenty of Vitamin D, and go out and get sunshine when you can. These have all been acknowledged by the CDC to reduce your risk. That might seem like new information to some of you. That’s not your fault. 

Thankfully, the internal polling numbers at the DNC concluded that The Science™ had changed to agree with the studies we’d all read in 2020, despite the best efforts to discourage us from noticing them. The private US intelligence contractors / advertising firms known as Facebook and Google valorously spent two years memoryholing that information. Thanks to Ray Bradbury, everyone knows that paper burns at 451 degrees. But what temperature does it take to melt a server farm in Silicon Valley?

I feel for these people. I really do. It’s tough. How can they ever go back? They’ve just had a taste of what they always wanted. How can they possibly surrender their new, mad kingdom to the unvaxxed barbarians at their gates? Their every fantasy has been finally universalized and indulged by everyone. They can't let it end. They can't return to the hell they were living where people don't constantly affirm their nonsense.

It’s been fascinating watching what happens when people are required by law to abandon the gym, work, social contact, science, nutrition, sunlight, God, dating, and hygiene. In 2020-2022, living your worst life was virtuous, and dysfunction was patriotic. Some people seem to really like it.

For many, getting what they wanted wasn't even enough; they demanded that you celebrate them for it every day.

*feed your kids nuts at an early age, or else you're a bad parent