This isn’t Happening

The wife and I are riding out another wave. The Xi Omicron variant is threatening to keep her in Zambia.

The name of the variant is one of the most interesting things about it. As you probably know, right-wing morons and conspiracy nuts have suggested coronavirus is a politicized disease. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s purely coincidental that the World Health Organization went through the Greek alphabet and chose the letter omicron, skipping the designation Xi, which JUST HAPPENS TO BE THE NAME OF CHINA’S SLEAZY PREMIER.

Personally, I call him Chi Penguin. Don’t ask me why.

Yes, when you’re concerned about the perception that wealthy, corrupt nations and business leaders are controlling the flow of information and spinning things so severely no one really knows what’s happening, the best way to build trust is to show you’re terrified of offending a slimy despot who is responsible for organ harvesting, slave labor, forced abortions, political censorship, political imprisonments, and the spread of coronavirus to the rest of the world.

I guess it’s a good thing the Greek alphabet doesn’t contain a letter called Joe.

As of this minute, several developed nations have banned travel from countries in southern Africa, where the virus was first detected. Zambia, miraculously, has been spared so far. Only the UK has banned Zambians, which is okay, because who in his right mind wants to visit England in the winter?

Rhodah and I are hoping for France and the Netherlands. I believe we just lost the Netherlands, but France still has not surrendered. Uncharacteristically.

I preferred to stay in France anyway, but Rhodah is still in that stage of life where she wants to cram as many countries as possible into every trip.

South Africans are mad because they’ve been banned. They say they’re being punished for discovering the variant, which was actually found first in a person from Botswana. They say it makes no sense for covid infernos like the UK to ban South Africans, who currently live in a not-too-disastrous covid area.

They seem to be upset because of the stigma as well. With regard to that, I think they’re whiners. Getting your lingerie in a knot over the fear that other countries may think a disease variant started in your country is silly. They start where they start. The Spanish flu started in the United States. Doesn’t bother me if people say so. I have to admit, though, we must have had a good PR team, hanging the pandemic around the neck of a country 3000 miles away.

At first, I thought Omicron was a bad thing, but now I’m wondering if it’s really a blessing. To the world, I mean. Not me and the wife. For us, it’s a royal pain.

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the lady who informed South Africa’s government about the existence of Omicron, says every case she has seen has been very mild. I’m no epidemiologist, but…what if this is a milder variant that displaces the one that suffocates people?

What if Omicron infects a big percentage of the world, makes very few people seriously ill, and enhances their immunity to real coronavirus? That would be pretty cool, by 2021’s admittedly pathetic standards.

Edward Jenner, the man who first vaccinated people against smallpox, and who, as far as we know, never had his genitalia sliced off or insisted people pretend he was a woman, found that if he infected people with the mild illness cowpox, they became immune to smallpox. He found this out using a brilliant strategy. He infected a lower-class 8-year-old boy with cowpox, waited until he recovered, and exposed him to smallpox. The boy didn’t die, so they probably gave him a dose of the belt and put him back to work in the arsenic mine.

I guess guinea pigs were expensive back then. No use wasting money.

It would be nice if Omicron circled the globe and made us all resistant to real covid. That would be better than killing millions of us and making our vaccines look even sillier than they do right now.

Where will we go if France doesn’t work out? Turkey is still on the table, as one might expect two days after Thanksgiving, and because the lira is worth about as much as a MAGA hat in Detroit, everything in Turkey is very cheap.

Mexico is a possibility, but I am still detoxing after many years in Miami, and Mexico might activate my PTSD. If Miami is smallpox, Mexico must be cowpox.

I really don’t want to go to the Bahamas. If you don’t want to sit on the beach, fish, get drunk, or engage ladies of easy virtue, a Bahamas vacation basically amounts to 10 days of room service in a badly-cleaned room, cooked by some of the least-enthusiastic hospitality employees since The Shining. The people on some islands are nice, but we would probably have to go to Nassau, where I always got the impression that when restaurant and hotel workers saw me and my wallet walk in to pay their bills, it ruined their day.

When I was in Nassau, staying in a marina on PI, the whole area smelled like poop, flies were a big problem, and it was not unusual to see large pieces of excrement floating by with the tide. Trying to get people to wait on me made me feel like Patrick Swayze in Ghost.

All this being said, I would go almost anywhere to be united with my bride. Well. Not Miami. Not until I’ve ruled out destinations like Somalia, Antarctica, Pyongyang, and the active crater on La Palma.

Today I thought about visiting Zambia. The problem with that, apart from the obvious fact that I would be in Zambia, is that our president’s advisors or his certified nursing assistant might tell him to ban flights from Zambia, and then I would be stuck there until Kamala Harris, AKA The Girl with Colonoscope Eyes, took over and revisited America’s paranoia settings.

Here’s hoping that through Omicron, our kind and patient God accomplishes what man hasn’t been able to do in two years: flattening the curve.