View from the North 40: The trouble with COVID

The trouble with COVID is that it is a public relations nightmare. Where’s the angle? The hook?

For starters, the name. COVID-19 hardly strikes fear in the heart of mankind let alone respect for its power. Even when some people were calling it a flu, it was, as the misnomer was intended to do, hard to take it seriously. Black Death, though, now there’s a name a PR person could do something with. Shoot, even the kids’ plague-tribute song “Ring around the Rosie” has lasted nearly 400 years without one multi-platinum record or sold-out promotional tour.

And while we’re on the subject of the whole hair-splitting of language, what’s with the insistence of “so-and-so didn’t die of COVID, it was the pneumonia (or the symptom of your choice) that got ’em.” That just creates confusion.

Let’s say you’re walking in the woods and a grizzly bear rudely runs you down and mauls you to death. I’m really sorry you had to die for this example, but statistics say these scenarios are more relevant to the audience if they happen to “you,” rather than “I “ or the super-generic “a person.” I’ll say nice things at your ficticious memorial to make it up to you.

So at the memorial do you want me to say “It was such a tragic loss when my friend You died of blood loss.” Or go one step further, and just say “died of natural causes” because, of course, naturally you died from the lack of blood, which drained out all those holes the grizzly bear poked into you with its teeth and claws.

I prefer to say that you died of a grizzly bear mauling.

Because if it’s my bear-mauling funeral, I want you to say that it took a grizzly bear to end my life. In fact, I hope you’d be able to add that they identified the culprit when examination of the hide revealed bite marks that matched my dental records.

I know, all that’s pretty dark and dismal, so let’s talk sex appeal and how COVID doesn’t have any. Neither does the vaccination.

How are we supposed to get excited about these things?

Plus, statistically speaking, the vaccination and the mask help others more than they help us. Where’s the rugged-individualistic appeal of that in a world where I don’t have to be tougher than a bear, I only have to faster than just one person in my whole hiking party.

Getting your name entered in a drawing for free groceries is at least something for a vaccination promo, but no one, is offering a six-pack of abs for your troubles.

Truly, it’s really unfortunate that the vaccination side effects don’t read, “gives you fuller, shinier hair, six-pack abs and clear skin that looks like the perfect tan” to entice us to take it.

To be honest, I don’t know of a virus in the world that will make us feel or look better, so it’s probably not fair to talk about the sex-appeal of the virus which by nature would only have anti-sex appeal.

On that note, what if COVID didn’t give us normal illness problems that range from flu-like symptoms to permanent heart or lung damage or death but rather other things that hit us where they would hurt?

You know how people tell you when you’re sick that you look “peaked and drained.” What if that really happened? What if you turned totally colorless from COVID? I’m talking 50 shades of gray, for real — like wearing a scarlet letter forever, only duller.

What if it caused us to gain 40 pounds? In the shape of an inner tube. Around each thigh.

What if it made our noses grow? By three inches. Because three inches isn’t much — until you hang it off the end of your nose. Now that's a hook.

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Personally, I also blame pharmaceutical companies for the general lack of public concern about COVID. People willingly pay for and use prescription medication with side effects like organ failure, heart attacks, birth defects, cancer, bleeding from the gums or other orifices of the head, personality changes that include suicidal or homicidal thoughts or actions, and death. If it’s OK for a cure to cause death, who’s afraid of disease anymore? Just sayin’ at http://facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .