Apocalypse December 2021
The Party
Mary and Joseph were turned away. It’s fair enough! There’s no room at the inn. Listen to the man, he said they’re full! It’s survival of the fittest, and well we can’t keep dragging our heels caring about the most vulnerable. If you don’t like it here why don’t you leave?
Second winter of the pandemic, here we fucking go again. More cases, fewer containment measures, no financial support. We didn’t solve the issue so it circles back to herd immunity and life goes on, at least for those with the luxury of agency for change. At some stage those two classes of people will be dead and alive. (Uh-huh.) Alive being the ones who had faith in their natural immune system. (Ah. Hm.) Vaccine uptake hits a ceiling. War profiteering, secrecy clauses, manufactured scarcity. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be one of the most lucrative drugs in pharmaceutical history, while only two percent are fully vaccinated in low-income countries. The potential of what we could do is wasted on what we are doing. If we do the right thing eventually it’ll raise the question why we had to hesitate first (I know, but it’s rhetorical).
Godless self-appointed gods, all great, rich and powerfool men. Your Tory Christmas champagne parties, our relatives dying alone in hospital. They literally look as if they are laughing at us. Will it cut through, stick, change the consensus? Question now in tea room is Boris reaching a tipping point — where he is becoming a liability and no longer an asset? The PM loves his fancy dress costumes: impersonating a police officer (impersonating a PM). Wearing masks, carnivalesque excess. So that’s the fluff; manoeuvring the executive above and beyond reach of the law, that’s the substance. Like he’s saying, I am the police. Nationality and Borders Bill, Policing Bill, Health and Care Bill. This is exactly how it happens. Liars policing the truth. Getting wrapped up in the law. Take hold of the law. Then you’re unstoppable. But you’re fools. Ministers against the scientists, you’ll stumble, trip yourselves up, becoming prey to your own propaganda. Eventually, by-election by by-election. But time is not on our side.
The sun is reborn, the crowning of a false king. Power built on performative seriousness (but what about now?) Bah-humbuggery. Complete inversion of reality. Ownership currently limited to the non-fungible metaverse. Prime-time watching ex-footballers operating Smartboards. Jürgen Klopp trusts experts, he follows the advice of smart, educated people who know their field because they’ve dedicated their lives to it and have studied it (like him with football, like them with epidemiology). Ignore those who pretend to know. Ignore lies and misinformation. Listen to people who know best. If you do that, you end up wanting the vaccine and the booster. But all we need is a variant as dangerous as Delta and contagious as Omicron and we’re completely fucked. We’re so not in control of this situation. We’re derailing, riding on circumstance. The people consented and complied; I doubt if we’ll get them/they’ll get us to comply en-masse again.
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