A Modest Proposal

to end the covid pandemic and return to normal as soon as possible by encouraging infection and freedom

As I watch the news, or read the posts, and shake my head at the memes over the past eighteen months, I’m disturbed by the lack of unity this nation is experiencing during one of the most difficult periods in our history.  For one reason or another, we simply cannot agree what is best for all of us while at least a tenth of the population gets infected by a potentially fatal disease. 

Potentially, yes…like second-hand smoke is potentially fatal.  Remember when we were free to smoke on airplanes, and restaurants, and offices, and stadiums, and even hospitals?  We pretty much smoked whenever and wherever we felt the need.  We were American and we were free.  That was until circa late-eighties and early-nineties when people who didn’t smoke were getting lung cancer, emphysema, and other respiratory afflictions.  Then some health officials figured out how non-smokers were getting sick…from the smoke of other people who chose to smoke near them.  It made sense, right?  If the smoke passing through a filter can make someone sick, so can the unfiltered smoke as inhaled by someone else who happened to be nearby.  So, government banned public smoking indoors.  Private businesses followed suit.  There were complaints, sure.  I myself wrote a letter to the Mayor of Houston expressing my outrage when he outlawed smoking in bars.  We were sacrificing our freedom for the “common good.”  And all smokers were segregated and quarantined…forced to take our freedoms outside and at least twenty-five feet from any entrance… or quit the habit entirely.  It was a terrible time for American freedoms.

Thirty years later, American freedoms are under attack again.  Mandates are being implemented at all levels of government and even private businesses.  Get the vaccine or get out, get fired, get shamed. 

They just want to control us so they can impose their will.  If they were truly concerned with everyone’s health, they would be passing out insulin to diabetics and chemo to cancer patients…for free.  It has nothing to do with “contagion” because the vaccine does not stop the spread…all it does is keep you out of the ICU and keep you from dying when you get sick. 

The only people dying from the disease are obese people and the elderly (and every once in a while, a healthy person who can’t get an ICU bed, sure).  Fat people made their choice to be unhealthy when they ate fattening foods…a vaccine can’t cure obesity.  Old people have already lived their lives…and what good lives they had back when America was free. 

Okay, every now and then a healthy person dies.  Last week I learned about a neighbor’s seventeen-year-old son who caught the China virus…bad enough he had to go to the hospital.  But there were no ICU beds available in Houston, so they transferred him to a Dallas hospital, but he died on the way.  A healthy young man is supposed to survive covid, right?  And I’m sure he would have survived if he’d gotten the proper medical attention in time. 

The problem is with keeping our healthcare system from getting overwhelmed.  After all, there are plenty of people without covid who need medical attention, but the covid patients are filling up the beds…collateral damage I suppose.  In any case, this was the reason for the initial shut-down in March of 2020…to keep the hospitals from being overrun with covid patients.  President Trump and his Covid Task Force recommended 15 Days to Stop the Spread…which became 30 Days to Stop the Spread in April (and then became Stop the Steal in November and everything went to hell in January).

Then we started doing pretty well over the next six months or so of 2021.  Infections went down and ICU beds were plentiful.  People ventured out to bars, clubs, concerts, etc.  Mask mandates were lifted.  We’d seen the light at the end of the covid tunnel.  But you know what that light was…the Delta Train!  The virus mutated into a more contagious variant and proliferated across the globe.  Summer of ’21 saw new covid cases spike like they did in January, which had been the worst month by far.  Back to square one, right? 

Except no…we had a new weapon against the disease…an experimental vaccine.  I’ve heard on social media it was never tested on humans (it might have been a meme on Facebook or something), but there were trials done last fall…trials on guinea pigs or something, right?  Maybe monkeys.  In any case, it turned out to be very effective against the virus and even the mutated delta variant.  Only 3% of hospitalized patients were vaccinated with the “experimental vaccine.”  I suppose that is little consolation for those who do not trust science, doctors, mainstream media, or government (either Biden’s or Trump’s).  Numbers are imaginary and easily manipulated by any or all of these institutions.  Some small percentage of us do not even believe there ever was a virus (just as those who deny the shape of the earth is an ovoid sphere). 

Somewhat recently, President Biden strongly suggested we all get vaccinated.  He assured us the vaccine is safe and effective at preventing serious illness from covid-19 including the delta variant.  At the same time, he instituted federal vaccine mandates which required all military, federal contractors, and healthcare workers to get vaccinated…or else.  What he did not seem to realize is half the population absolutely loathes him, including 69% of Republican voters who believe he is an illegitimate president who only won the office by way of widespread voter fraud.  Because the pandemic has been so politicized and because people are so politically biased lately, no governmental action or suggestion, regardless how well-intended, will positively affect the hearts and minds of the general population.  I don’t know who could possibly unite the American people right now, but it sure as hell is not Joe Biden.  Maybe Matthew McConaughey.

So, what are we to do to get past this “plan-demic?”  Like Jonathan Swift, I have a proposal.

Whether we believe in the effectiveness of vaccines and masks or not, we all agree there’s one way out of this mess, right?  Two words: “herd immunity.”  Whether by natural or artificial means, we need to reach a critical level of immunity among the population.  Those who believe the vaccine is the means to reach herd immunity would prefer we all line up to get the shot.  Those who prefer natural herd immunity would prefer we go on with our usual lives and let the virus run its course. 

According to the Mayo Clinic, we need 70% of the population immunized in order to reach herd immunity.  We already have 57% of the US population fully vaccinated.  It took a lot of incentives to get over the 50% mark…including cash, million-dollar lottery chances, childcare, scholarships, food and drinks, and I heard something about free weed (must’ve been Seattle or Portland).

We’ve exhausted the vaccine route.  Anyone who was on the fence has now climbed down on the vaccine side.  Time to get the other side of the fence taken care of.  I’m talking about natural immunity, whereby a large portion of the population contracts the virus, gets sick, and then gets well or dies…either way, immunity is achieved.

I suggest a nation-wide festival… a huge party in every city and county with a population over 100k.  The purpose is to spread the virus to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.  Like super-spreader events x1000.  We’ll need large venues…indoor sports stadiums and large convention centers.  We’ll need a lot of alcohol, food, and entertainment…enough to last for two weeks.  Local bars and restaurants can set up booths.  We’ll need entertainment…musicians and bands can tour the country so as not to spend more than one day at any venue.  Some of them might even do this for free as a charitable event.     Maybe do some political rallies…folks seem to turn out in large numbers for those. 

The venue needs to be large enough to hold a lot of people, but not comfortably…we need to keep them crowded together to maximize transmission.  We could use portable fencing to corral people together when crowds are smaller and expand it to fit more as they arrive or collapse the perimeter as people leave.  Maybe use cruise ships for areas on the coast.  They don’t have to sail…just keep a great number of people confined in a small space.  We already know transmission is high on cruise ships.

Vaccinated folks are welcome…no discrimination here…they’re passing the virus around, too (although not as effectively).  No masks though.  No hand sanitizer, no social distancing.  In fact, I suggest we toss some black pepper into the crowds to stimulate coughing/sneezing fits and accelerate the spread of the virus.

I don’t think we need to have children there…there’s likely to be a lot of drunken debauchery going on which is not suitable for children, but folks are going to take it home to their kids anyway.  I suggest we do this right before Christmas break so kids will have two weeks to catch it and get over it (or whatever) before going back to school.

Sorry, we’ll have to shut down the economy again…but it won’t be a total shut down.  People attending the two-week event will not go to work. Hopefully, they will continue to party at the super-spreader venues for the entire two weeks or until…you know, they are no longer able to party.  While they are partying, the people who don’t want to get sick can go to work as usual.  Then two weeks later, they switch…the Freedom Group participants who are not dying by this point can go to work while the Safety Group participants stay home safely watching Netflix or whatever.

I suggest two other things for the festival events:  a giant makeshift hospital where infected can go to be comfortable, and many refrigerated trucks for those unfortunate enough to succumb to the virus.  We can probably keep ice, drinks, and food in these trucks for the first week or so.

Its going to cost a pretty penny to pull this off, but the virus has already cost us so much…several trillion dollars of taxpayer money spent on stimulus checks, free vaccines, mitigation strategies, etc.…LOTS of etc.  This way will be cheaper in the long run.

Except in lives…Yeah, a lot of people will probably die.  But look at it this way… they didn’t live their lives in fear.  Isn’t that the way we all want to live…and die?  As Americans, we all have the right to live and die as we choose (except suicide is still illegal in the US).

Once these parties begin, people are free to come and go as they choose.  We can’t keep people confined inside the gates because this is America and we all have our rights regardless of our intelligence levels, our ignorance of science, or our political biases.  So infected people will be out in public spreading the virus in high numbers…I mean much higher than usual.  If you’d rather avoid the virus, if you’ve been vaccinated and are comfortable with that level of immunity, stay home.  If you can’t get vaccinated, if you have a compromised immune system, stay home.  If you’re pregnant and do not want to subject your fetus to the vaccine, stay home.  Its only for a few weeks…no longer than President Trump suggested when the pandemic began.

If you decide to stay home during the purge/festival, or following the festival to avoid getting sick, no one can guarantee you will keep your job.  In America, your employer has the right to terminate you if you do not report to work for whatever reason.  The federal government cannot force your employer to keep you because that might be construed as tyrannical or authoritarian.  Sorry.  There’s good news though…there will be a lot of new job openings 10-14 days following the festival.  This could be a great opportunity for a career change!

As I mentioned, we’ll have a makeshift hospital at each event with all the approved therapeutic treatments…antibody transfusions, Remdesivir, and of course supplemental oxygen and invasive mechanical ventilation.  However, medications which are not approved will not be available.  We cannot ask doctors to administer a treatment which they believe might be harmful.  But the placebo effect is a real and sometimes effective treatment so be sure to bring your own horse-dewormer, or hydroxychloroquine, or whatever else your “personal research” has revealed to be effective against the virus.

Security won’t be searching anyone at the Freedom Festival so bring your illegal drugs as well as your own covid therapeutics.  Puff-puff-pass is another effective dissemination of viruses.

Also, I thought of a few items which should help spread the virus during the festivities…

• Circulated, unfiltered air conditioning
• Buffet lines, salad bars, baked potato bars (without sneeze guards)
• Fondue fountains, chocolate fountains
• Trough-style urinals…for unisex restrooms
• No soap or paper towels in the restrooms.  No sinks for that matter.
• Kissing booths

I can’t think of everything though.  If anyone else has some suggestions, please leave a comment.  We’ll get through this together…physically together this time.

…except for smokers…we are still required to restrict and segregate tobacco smokers at the Freedom Festival…you know, for the common good.

-Big Steve