
It’s been a long time since we had a proper health scare but, as we’re all washing our hands of the consequences of our panic buying on the vulnerable, it seems that it’s time to hand over Neil’s blog, for the first time since Ebola was last news, to our medical correspondent, Dr Augustus Felch MD, PhD; head of Unexplained Gunshot Injuries, No Questions Asked at Abdul’s 24-hour Veterinary Surgery and All-Nite Takeaway, Wolverhampton and currently visiting lecturer in epidemiology and virology at the University of Abawsit[1].
Dr Felch is, by an odd coincidence, also a customer of Amazon Prime+ and so occasionally privy to books delivered from the near future. Having filled in most of the mazes in “A child’s guide to the viruses that led to the great fall” (All-Seeing-Eye press, 2089) he is able to give us a little idea of what to expect after the Corona virus has gone the way of polio, bubonic plague and common decency.
2022: After Covid-19 is finally stamped out after the ironic discovery that the virus cannot survive more than six metres away from toilet paper, the WHO declare the emergency over.
2023: Bidet manufacture peaks, causing a porcelain shortage. UK president Cummings orders ancient pottery to be ground up and recycled, releasing the Ovid-19 virus. The virus affects the mind, compelling sufferers to abandon their fasting, in a joke that only the classically educated understand. An epidemic of obesity ensues and the NHS finally collapses under the weight of the overweight. More panic buying ensues, mostly of Doritos and Double chocolate fudge ice cream.
2026: After a cure for Ovid-19 is found, the Corvid virus is discovered, leading scientists to suspect that these viruses are being deliberately manufactured by an evil and slightly dyslexic genius. The Corvid virus causes DNA to change and mutate people into crow-like creatures. The cause of the infection is finally tracked to Channel 4 executives who have accidentally booked both Noel Fielding and Davina McCall onto the same panel show, causing a Critical Crow event. There is a huge increase in the incidence of murders, in a joke that’s really only appreciated by fans of Countdown.
2036: Humans and crows live in an uneasy truce but both populations are decimated by widespread infertility, caused by a strain of resistant super-Chlamydia that evolved because property developers somehow thought that putting hot-tubs in university halls of residence wouldn’t end in tears.
2042: Humanity is brought to the brink of extinction due to food poisoning as the pricks who panic-bought tinned food in 2020 are still living off it. The only people left alive to repopulate the Earth are vegan alternative lifestyle enthusiasts living in a Christian commune in a village of yurts outside Totnes. The next 120 years are frankly unbearable.
So there you have it. What can we learn from this, other than that the good doctor is prone to flights of fancy after recreational use of the medication cabinet? Very little, other than the future, whatever it may bring, is going to be weirder than we imagine. That if a good health scare can do anything, it’s to shine a light on what people are really like. Good people will band together and help each other, and pricks will profiteer by selling hand sanitiser at eight times the market price. All we can hope is that the day that those arseholes finally run out of toilet paper is the day that an out of date tin of spam gives them the galloping shits.
[1] A Bloke At Wetherspoons Swears It’s True