Starker truths

David Goodsell: Coronavirus

For the virus, we are the virus. No, let me put that differently: we are the hosts. 'Host' even sounds like too much honor. Hosting sounds important. We are not. We are completely interchangeable. If I am not hosting the virus, you will. If you won't host it, he or she will. The virus doesn't care. The virus behaves like a completely 'art of not giving a fuck' spoiled AirB&B-guest traveling with Uber, leaving no tip, not taking her eyes off her screen.
I was walking down the empty streets of the empty city and wondering what was I missing. Nothing? What if war broke out and nobody showed up? We don't need shops. We don't need restaurants. We don't need offices. We don't need trams, we don't need busses filled with tourists. We don't need museums. We don't need galleries. We don't need publishing houses, we don't need books, we don't need writers.
Food and shelter, you will argue. We will need some of that. Medicine, if necessary (even if there isn't any). Hospitals, probably.
Company. Comfort. Distraction.
Exercise. Motion.
Time.
Work. Always work. Without work, well, lethargy, idleness and, in the end, destruction.
Perhaps. What we need, depends on, well, our needs.
Most of us survive, but, then again, some of us don't. Most of the people who don't survive wouldn't have survived anyway.
This has always been true, but the truth seems starker now.
Some of us, with mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, – like me, I am led to believe –, will be super spreaders.
The virus is looking for super spreaders. Super spreaders are the virus' influencers, bestselling authors. I don't feel like a super spreader, but the virus has no patience for feeling.