he World Health Organization is in trouble. We barely had time to get used to
'iota' and 'theta'. Then they skipped over 'nu' because we humans are so
stupid we'd think it was a 'new' virus and stop wearing masks.
They skipped over 'xi' because they figured their main benefactor
was so stupid he'd withdraw his support. So now they're in trouble.
The rest of the letters are either well-funded sororities or food items
(pi, a food item; rho, a nautical term; sigma suggests Sigma Sigma Sigma
and Sigma Chi, which are sororities or frat houses, so everyone would
assume it's now a venereal disease). The rest are just plain embarrassing
(upsilon, the upside-down virus; psi, the psychic virus).
What to do? Clearly the WHO has a plan. Omicron is a perfect transition to what they really want to use: cartoon characters. There are many of them, and some have scary names, which is handy because as the virus becomes more benign they need to assign scarier names to keep the panic up.
Here are some suggestions.
| Transformers characters | ||
| Bonecrusher | Devastator | Dirge |
| Dead End | Scourge | Skullcruncher |
| Razorclaw | Cutthroat | Skyquake |
| Mindwipe | Abominus | Bruticus |
| Starscream | Overbite | Cheetor |
| Rattrap | Bumblebee | Jazz |
Unfortunately, the names are getting less scary toward the end. Bumblebee is not so scary, Overbite can be corrected, and Jazz is trans or gay or something. So let's try Star Wars.
| Star Wars characters | ||
| Jar Jar Binks | C-3PO | Anakin |
We're striking out already. C-3PO effectively conveys the existential anxiety we want people to feel, but Anakin is just an annoying bratty kid. That would make people think 'runny nose', 'whining', and 'stupidly falling into a lake of lava.'
How about politicians? They're scary, right?
| Scary Politicians | ||
| Biden | Putin | Justin Trudeau |
| Genghis Khan | Cuomo | Hitler |
The Biden strain kills a few cells, then leaves you with extra arms. The Putin strain makes you feel oppressed for a few days, after which it invades your neighbors. The Genghis Khan strain is highly transmissible, and the Cuomo strain is particularly deadly, especially as there are two of them.
Another possibility is to use variants in spelling for variants of the disease. Covfefe-19 (prophesied by Donald Trump); Corvair-19 (spreads slowly, then crashes).
It seems using city names wasn't such a bad plan. There's no such thing as bad publicity, and lots of cities would pay good money to have a virus named after them. For some, being associated with a deadly virus would improve their reputation. And for sure you wouldn't want to go to any of these places if you wanted to live:
| Cities | ||
| Wuhan | San Francisco | Chicago |
| Detroit | Newark | Washington, D.C. |
dec 22 2021, 5:26 am
Category: Useless, pointless articles; test of CSS fixed width tables
