An Anti-vaxxer’s Wet Dream
It’s been five years since we’ve returned to “normal”. Five years since the wealthy nations on our planet were able to vaccinate the majority of their citizens (not including the kids, who it turns out, were not the ones spreading the virus).
Life has gone back to the way it was before, but now most of the populus receives a COVID vaccine booster every year alongside their flu jab. The ICUs are no longer full. Occasionally there is an outbreak of the virus among the anti-vaxx communities in Oregon or Utah, but for the most part, herd immunity has been achieved, and for the most part, you are able to forget that a pandemic had recently brought death, economic devastation and chaos to the planet. With a quick flash of your white vaccine card you were able to go to the movies, attend concerts and take your kids to indoor playgrounds again. Life was back, until, it wasn’t.
The deaths started five years after the first mRNA vaccine had been given in the first phase of clinical trials. One minute they were alive, and the next, their organs started shutting down. It took them less than 24 hours before their hearts stopped beating. The pharmaceutical companies tried their best to cover it up while they scrambled to “fix it”, but over 20,000 deaths were too much to hide. The press and the public connected the dots and then the terror took hold. The timing was remarkably consistent. For most people, it happened exactly 1,825 days after their first shot. The scientists who had saved the word with their innovation and expertise were now trying to save the world from their “cure”. Their companies delivered daily press conferences on their progress, and they hinted that there was light at the end of the tunnel, but then the scientists started dying. Of course they were vaccinated with the vaccines they invented. Why wouldn’t they be?
Most accepted it. Someone made an app which counted down the days you had until your time was up. Marriages ended, orgies were common and rioting took hold. People liquidated all their assets and rushed to get cryogenically frozen. The cryo companies began making a fortune, until it dawned on their employees that they too needed an escape plan and they all made a pact to freeze each other. No one was left to man the freezers, so when the power outages began they thawed and died for a second time — never achieving their dream of resurrection for the cure.
You were one of the early ones to get vaccinated. You used a registration code meant for elderly minorities and cut the line. You also got all your close friends and family vaccinated early with the code. Others your age were given the J&J vaccine. They are safe. The guilt consumes you. You didn’t feel too guilty at the time. You were just thrilled to see your friends indoors again. You can’t take the wait, but you need to drive your kids across the country to your Christian anti-vaxxer cousin’s house before you and your husband’s time is up. You haven’t been close in over a decade, but she’s the only relative you have who doesn’t have an expiry date. You are grateful. Your kids don’t have to go to the centers where the less fortunate and soon to be orphans are going. It’s too much, but you know you are getting off easy. The ones with the bigger shit sandwich are the ones who are getting left behind with the anti-vaxxers. The J&J vaccinated who now have to live in a world run by QAnon anti-vaxxers who were proven right. God help them all.
Photo by Hakan Nural on Unsplash
