Infamous among the plague-riddled societies of the early 2020s and feared by everyone except for your anti-vax uncle Doug, coronavirus is known to be a killer — but a misunderstood one at that. Tatler managed to obtain a one-of-a-kind interview with the silent stalker — to find out how it’s feeling and what makes it tick.
Rohan Dhillon (RD): Let’s start off with some general remarks. How have the past few months been going for you?
SARS-CoV-2 (SC): You know, honestly, I think I have pretty good right now! I know that might not make too much sense — but you have to remember: I still get more credit than imbecilic influenza or my crappy coronavirus cousins, but I don’t even have to do as much work!
RD: Well, that’s quite the surprise! Has your thinking changed since 2019?
SC: I think that with age, everyone’s thinking changes, right? When I was a little kid, I had all these dreams and visions of becoming famous and revered among the infectious disease community — and I got my first taste of that in early 2020. It went swimmingly for the first few months, especially with the boost I got from the American media, but then it got really exhausting. In particular, China deported me because of political dissonance (so much for the “freedom of speech” in their constitution) and a lot of Western leaders tried discrediting my accomplishments. Don’t get me wrong, I expected some people to compare me to scrawny old flu, but the volume of comparisons was unexpected — and quite hurtful, to be honest. So once you guys came up with the vaccine in such a short amount of time, I decided my time was probably up and prepped for retirement. I was done with whatever idiocy humanity was cooking up.
RD: And yet you still stuck around for a while right?
SC: You know — that’s the second thing about you guys that surprised me. I thought that once you had gotten the vaccine, I’d be scary enough to encourage most of you to get it. But noooo. I mean 20% of your population cannot possibly believe “the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease.” Were you guys living under a rock for nine months?! Were the billion infections not enough? Seriously, what do you people want? My great-grandfather — the Spanish flu — always warned me about humanity’s tendency to cause more destruction than we ever could alone and that they never gave us the credit we deserved. Granted he had quite a bit of temper and at least some of it has hopefully been lost through the generations.
RD: What are your thoughts on the vaccines and boosters?
SC: I think they’re pretty impressive. I already mentioned that I wanted a vacation at the end of 2020 — but I couldn’t quit of course. If I did that, I would’ve become great-grandpa’s final casualty. The vaccine presented a convenient out — and even more than that, I’m glad that I was a part of humanity’s first mRNA vaccine. It truly is an honor!
RD: Anything else you’d like to mention?
SC: Just one thing. My time is over, but what I’ve seen makes me feel sorry for you guys. I’m hardly the prodigal sun of my family — I was never supposed to make it in the real world. And yet you somehow managed to give me my break. Just make sure you don’t do that again. I’d hate to have my negative IQ cousin surpass me.
