Spreading the Word, Testing the Waters (Part 1 of 2)

“Yup, it’s true. The virus was ‘engineered.’ In an unscientific, mostly-illiterate way, you whackadoodles were right all along.” In about a dozen words, the microbiologist, who Tucker Carlson had been interviewing for the past half-hour, confirmed practically every unhinged Covid myth the Moscow Mouthpiece had made during the past four years.

All of the ridicule Tucker had received from liberals for his anti-vax position throughout the years of the pandemic was momentarily shut down. Tucker had asked, "How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccines?" And the experts replied with numbers and facts that had no effect on Friar Tuck’s position. Tucker had literally shrieked, "EVERYONE IN AUTHORITY WANTS YOU TO GET YOUR VACCINE" and hinted at the undisclosed deaths caused by and the ineffectiveness of vaccines. And he was right that the “authorities” he ranted against were scientists and healthcare professionals who absolutely recommended that everyone be vaccinated.

The CDC responded with "Millions of people in the United States have received COVID-19 vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history," which just inflamed Tucker’s agitation further arguing that the CDC, MSNBC, NPR/PBS, and CNN, the ex-employer from whom he was “involuntarily terminated” and Fox’s arch-media-enemy, cannot be trusted. Even some of Tucker’s co-workers at Fox betrayed him. Jonah Goldberg ridiculed Tucker’s logic with, "FACT: Every single person who ever died blinked before they died. The vast majority — like 99% — blinked mere seconds before death. And yet, no one talks about this silent killer." Carlson’s hero, Donald Trump, was almost his only ally in his crusade against science and vaccinations, but when Trump “lost” the 2020 elections poor Tucker was out on a limb with only a few million (73 million in the USA, to be precise) marginally-literate supporters.

But now, Tucker’s wildest paranoid dreams were being confirmed by an epidemiologist loosely connected to the World Health Organization, Dr. Simon Turenne. Turenne had agreed to go on air, live, with Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson on the Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show after nearly three years of a world pandemic that had, supposedly, taken at least 20 million lives, world-wide and almost 2 million in the United States alone. Dr. Turenne was a thin, well-dressed, angular man of indeterminate ethnicity who seemed unusually comfortable in the company of a man who clearly, loudly, and often spoke of his disdain for anyone involved in science or the reality-based world. In fact, the Fox News crew had been generally hostile to the scientist from the moment of his arrival and he hardly seemed to notice, let alone be offended or nervous. When Tucker asked questions in his usual snide, smirking style the doctor smiled back at him and calmly answered each question as if the arguments were being presented by a rational, intelligent person. That act of acknowledgment seemed to push Carlson further over the edge of the cliff from which he had long since jumped; his wrath was no longer even slightly contained.

“’Yup!’ That is what you have to say for creating a disease that killed millions and has cost nations countless coin and stability?”

With that infuriating smile still plaster to his face, Dr. Turenne replied, “’Yes’ seemed a little formal, considering present company and your audience, but if ‘yes’ makes you feel better the answer is the same. The original SARS-CoV-2 and almost all of the variants that followed were man-designed or human-evolved. Actually men and women did the “designing,” since it was a cross-national and unisex effort.” That smile, again, this time a little wider bordering on outright happiness.

Tucker looked as if he’d been slapped or had seen an actual naked woman. Years of pretending to be outraged at his own conspiracy inventions had left him unprepared to be honestly outraged. You could see the steam building as he sputtered his way toward a response. But before he got there, Turenne continued, “It was an experiment. There was a lot of argument among the design community as to how a response, especially among First World countries, would play out. We were, honestly, impressed with how the USA reacted with both a collection of well-reasoned precautions and effective vaccines far sooner than we imagined. Scientists not in our loop created an assortment of vaccines and testing processes that will set the standard for however long the species continues to survive. Which, by the way, is estimated to not be much more than one hundred more years, at best, with the current climate degradation well underway.”

Tucker’s small narrow mouth and vanishing lips quivered and those strange looking puppy ears seemed to stick out even further than usual as they turned beet red. His cheeks inflated and deflated as he drew in the necessary air for a typical screaming response. “What the hell were you people thinking!” Tucker finally managed to shriek in his shrill, barely-understandable imitation of an upper-class, educated white man with little tolerance for opinions that do not mirror his own. “You intentionally murdered two million Americans [Obviously an accidental slip of the tongue, since up to this point Carlson had insisted that only a few thousand US citizens had died from the Trump Plague.] as an EXPERIMENT?” His pitch had raised nearly an octave above normal by the last word. “What kind of monsters are you?”

Despite being practically drenched with spittle from Tucker’s frothing, spluttering outburst, Dr. Turenne remained calm and looked clearly amused by Carlson’s emotional response. “A more rational and responsible question would be ‘Why would you engage in an experiment that had this radical an outcome?’ The answer is that it appears to be the only way to solve many of the problems the planet is facing, with or without humans participating in either the solutions or contributing more to the problems. It was an experiment to test the world governments’ capabilities, the individual countries’ populations, and mostly a test to see what portion of the world population a real pandemic would most affect. As a test, it succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. We have collected more data in the last four years regarding all of the issues and political systems and human responses than we expected to obtain if the pandemic had gone on in experimental form for at least another decade.”

[To be continued]

Spreading the Word, Testing the Waters (Part 2 of 2)

All Rights Reserved © 2022 Thomas W. Day

Spreading the Word, Testing the Waters (Part 2 of 2)

[Continued from Part 1]

You could almost hear and see the steam escaping from somewhere under Tucker’s carefully sculpted toupee. A burst of unintelligible noise escaped that, eventually, turned into a series of insults, raving astonishment, and disconnected partially formed statements and questions. Dr. Turenne waited patiently; removing a handkerchief from his jacket with which to remove Tucker’s expelled saliva from his face and clothing. After the fake-newsman/entertainer’s expletives and hysterics wound down to sputtering and nonsense syllables, Dr. Turenne interrupted with, “Sorry. I couldn’t identify anything that I could respond to in all of that, so I’ll continue explaining the experiment’s results.

“What we learned was that in most undeveloped countries, if a vaccine was available the overwhelming majority of residents in those areas would take it immediately. In countries that most citizens in the United States might identify as ‘socialist,’ those citizens mostly trusted their governments to do a reasonable job of testing and distributing vaccines and information. Both of the first two types of societies, under-developed and ‘socialist,’ were able to vaccinate nearly 100% of their populations as soon as vaccines were available. And we worked quite hard to ensure that vaccines were made available as quickly as possible, including ignoring patent rights and corporate profits whenever possible. In the West, certain groups were also likely to obtain vaccinations immediately and those groups quickly learned the necessary skills to prevent infection.

“Other groups, your audience for example, tended to gravitate toward the worst possible information sources, like yourself, and remain unvaccinated and generally averse to taking any other precautions even four years into this experiment. First world countries in the west have done a particularly good job of segregating intellectual haves from have-nots; geographically and socio-politically. That reaction was particularly helpful for the purposes of our experiment.”

Tucker’s mouth, now wide open, failed to respond. Dr. Turenne  continued, “The kinds of people who will not make the slightest effort to protect their families and communities are also the people who will be unwilling to change their behavior regarding global warming, racial and economic inequality, ending nuclear armament and wars in general, and any number of issues that will result in the extinction of the human race and serious damage to almost all life on this planet. Their self-image and imagined self-importance is the only value they worship and that has turned out to be a spectacular advantage in ‘culling the herd.’” Turenne punctuated the end of that statement with finger quotes.

Finally, Tucker found his now hoarse and somewhat squeaky voice, “Culling the herd? What the fuck are you talking about?” At this point, Tucker was somewhere between outraged and terrified. His beady little eyes had narrowed to pinpoints and his lips had vanished entirely. There was no sign of his characteristic smirk.

Turenne’s smile returned in full force, “Thanks to influencers like you, our experiment has ended early and the conclusions are irrefutable. Our trial virus was a total and absolutely unpredictable success. I am here, primarily, to thank you and your misinformation colleagues for making it happen so quickly and moderately painlessly. Initially, there were more healthcare workers infected and even killed than we would have hoped, but for the most part they learned how to protect themselves. After the initial months if the pandemic, the few healthcare providers and first responders who were fatally infected were among your disciples. Of course, more than one million physicians and nurses left the US healthcare system in the first two years of the pandemic.

“However, the experiment is over, the data has been collected and analyzed, and the resulting actions have been taken.” Dr. Turenne’s smile dissolved into a more serious expression.

“What actions?” Tucker not only looked confused, he looked nervous and his question was barely audible.

“The last variant has been introduced and within a few hours of this broadcast, the world will begin the nasty job of cleaning up the real outcome of pandemic’s final form and getting on with the important work at hand. Depending on your perspective, and I suspect you will be around to have one since it is clear from your dissembling on the subject that you might be fully vaccinated, although I won’t be surprised if you haven’t kept up your booster regimen. If so, that will be unfortunate for you but no loss for humanity.” And the smile returned.

At the end of Dr. Turenne’s response, Tucker began to look terrified. A long pause ensued as Tucker tried to formulate a response under what had become a flood of information and an overload of doubt and suspicion. Finally, his rasping and hesitant voice returned to him and he asked, “What are you talking about? I thought the pandemic was over. Even Biden said . . . “

Now, Dr. Turenne laughed out loud. “Now, that has been your mistake from the beginning. You keep pointing your fingers at US ‘bleeding heart liberals’ and Democrats, but this ‘engineered pandemic,’ as you so cleverly deduced, is not a product of the US government; and certainly not the Chinese government or any government. This is an experiment and a world population solution that was engineered by a collection of concerned scientists and physicians across the world. The initial Covid variant and the evolutionary variants that followed were just a biological and data-collection trial balloon. Everything from the distribution and spread of the virus to the misinformation response to vaccines and preventative measures have been collected, assessed, and evaluated. Once the data and tactics were correlated, the testing phase of the experiment was complete and we are confident that the finished design will be at least 99% effective. The only undetermined variant is how quickly and efficiently the clean-up will be managed.”

Tucker’s usual quick, inaccurate, and snide response failed him and he squeaked out, “Clean-up?”

“Of course, here in the United States we anticipate approximately 140 million deaths in the next 24 hours. That will create approximate 10.4 million metric tonnes of human waste that will have to be disposed of quickly. Countries like Russia, England, Ireland, and Australia will have relatively similar clean-up problems to contend with, since those countries have comparable ‘conservative’ unvaccinated populations. ‘Vaccinated,’ by the way means having the initial vaccination and all boosters as of at least 30 days ago when vaccinations had been available across the world for at least 120 days. If you have the usual Covid early symptoms, you might want to get your affairs in order quickly. As Edward R. Murrow used to say, ‘Good night and good luck.’”

While Turenne beamed that irritating smile at the camera, Tucker coughed and began to look frantically around him at the Fox News familiar faces all breaking out in a sweat, many heading for the exits. 

[The End, Literally?]

All Rights Reserved © 2022 Thomas W. Day