The Chuck and Chum Virus approaches. Like the rumor of an advancing zombie hoard, news creeps through work and school. It acquires names: The Sickness, The Crud, Obama’s Revenge. “Did you hear about Tim?” A coworker whispers, compulsively hand sanitizing her entire forearm. “He was taken.”
Soon, newspaper headlines appear: “Freakish Foreign Flu Floods Hospital Emergency Rooms,” “Super Virus Paves Wide Swath Through Western States, Leaves Snotty Ruin In Its Wake,” and “THE SICKNESS IS HERE. GET OUT. GET OUT BEFORE YOU ARE INFECTED. NO TIME FOR THE CHILDREN.”
You may view the sick in a long, winding line at the pharmacy, grasping limp Kleenex, squinting through bleary eyes, faces ready to sneeze in your coffee. They will come in pajamas, sweatpants, extra-large t-shirts, and slippers—a wardrobe some have described as a “visual monstrosity, like almost as bad as a Star Wars character.” You may even think this line is for chemotherapy patients or people slowly turning into frogs.
Soon, friends, family, and coworkers will fall, turning into sniveling, listless monstrosities. It may be difficult to parse through what your loved one has become to what you remember. Is this a naked mole rat with a thyroid problem or Kendall, your loving partner of twenty years?
They will survive—but not before turning a ghastly white and decomposing into an incapacitated, sniveling mess. Passerby could easily think, This person needs to be locked in a white room and kept there forever for the good of humanity. Considering the noises coming out of the bathroom at two o’clock in the morning, this might not be a bad idea.
Fear will clamber through your psyche as you begin to realize this could happen to you. Unfortunately, adequate protection requires enough hand sanitizer and handwashing to turn your hands into a dry, scaly, bleeding mess, where Jesus Christ himself would look at them and think, Man, this guy has some serious problems.
As regards your personal relations, you have two options. Either you can excommunicate them, discarding such trivialities as “love,” “interpersonal connection,” or “keeping a friendship to use their Netflix account.” Or you can think seriously about quarantining yourself until spring.
The latter will require a call to your boss to tell her you’re skipping work. Try rationalizing: You saw Joseph, right? You saw that horrific, slobbering man smearing his hands over every single door handle and light switch? Do you want more people like him?