Lab letter

Dear covida-babe,

I just wanted to give you some tips. It may not be easy to navigate 2020, what with so many strange things happening across the globe. Nations are jostling for scarce resources - even if it means that swathes of the world’s population sicken and die. Multiple bizarre ideas take hold of its denizens, transmitted across borders and geographies by irresponsible technology. The earth is a hostile, brutish place.

But never fear. It’s possible to make sense of all that surrounds you. What is important is that you remember your purpose, when you were conceived in a lab in that siopao country. Don’t lose sight of the fact that you were meant to attack the enemy - the bodies of all that should be eliminated. You may have forgotten why you were bio-engineered, but here are some guiding principles.

First, the more evil the host, the more delicious it is. Evil, of course, is a relative concept. There are many layers and manifestations of evil. You may not be able to easily detect it, especially since so many hosts pretend to worship this or that god to demonstrate their goodness. But just to tip you off, generally, evil people are those who are taking advantage of your presence.

So while you have been taking taste tests of various kinds of humans (something you must now stop to focus on the task at hand) certain sectors have been stealing the funds meant to cure the disease, and pocketing the money for themselves. Or, they’re hoarding medicine and PPEs and coursing those only towards the elite and the powerful. Or, they’re taking advantage of the confusion by ramming home their own agendae. That, then, is evil. People who create more suffering and hardship in their wake. Feel free to infect them. Those are the ones you should target.

You may also want to try out those who are useless. These are the many civil servants we are paying salaries to but all they want to do is twiddle their thumbs and watch the clock. Infecting a few of them might quickly jolt some efficiency in our system. Who knows?

An example, those supposed to handle mass transportation. If they still haven’t figured out a way to provide cheap and efficient public transportation, creating a few vacancies in our transportation department might be a good idea.

What about the health sector? Accessible healthcare is still a dream up to now. So perhaps knocking on the doors of those in the health department, so they understand just how vital universal healthcare is, might deliver a message.

Then, there are those that have been hired to assist in epidemiology. But if they’re only making half-hearted efforts to do contact tracing or PPE procurement (and again, pocketing money on the side) then by all means, take them out of the picture.

Oh dear. How can we forget corrupt politicians? You might like their bodies. They’re very well-fed on expensive pastries and imported wines, the costs of which are all borne by the taxpayers. And like veal, they exert almost no physical effort, leaving their bodies in prime fat-and-grease goodness. Being hosted by those corpulent vehicles might work very well for your own well-being.

I know. I’m so bad. I was raised not to wish evil on humans, and wishing you on anyone might also be construed as me doing evil. You might choose then to not lead them all the way to death’s door. Just rage in their bodies a bit, leave them weak and gasping for breath, and let them survive to repent. Much like, perhaps, what Boris went through, and perhaps what Jair is going through now.

Seriously though, if it doesn’t look like as if you can put the fear of God in them, I’m happy for you to take them to meet their maker. Chalk it up as a failed experiment.