Novel “Stay Safe” Virus.
Tags: Covid 19, Funny, Sarcasm, Health

There is a new virus aboard as dangerous as SARS-CoV-2.

It has already invaded all aspects of our lives, sparing no one. It gains access to its victims by posing as a force for good, but once inside it erodes the victim’s moral fiber, destroying resolve and resilience. Patients present with the stay safe syndrome, a constellation of symptoms and signs that includes an irrational fear of other human beings, associated with involuntary flinching when in close proximity to others, compulsive 24/7 face mask wearing, and the diagnostic stay home behaviors. All communications, both verbal and written, begin and end with characteristic exhortations to ‘stay safe’.

It is in short the Novel ‘stay safe’ virus, believed to have disseminated first by mainstream media, and then by social media.

So insidious is the virus that it can freely mutate. Only last week, we received a WhatsApp message that opened with “We hope you are doing safe!”, confirming the novel virus had mutated from adjective to noun. It can only be a matter of time before it mutates into a verb.

Attempts to find a cure have proved fruitless

Scientists have discovered the stay safe virus affects every part of the victim’s mind, both conscious and subconscious, and is impossible to eradicate. Talking therapies fail because the patient constantly interrupts the therapist, exhorting them to ‘stay safe’, or, in the case of the mutant form of the virus, ‘do safe’. High hopes that high dose anti-psychotics might at least improve some of the more intrusive symptoms collapsed when it became clear that treated patients developed a zombie variant of the disease, characterized by overwhelming self-isolation.

Attempts to develop a vaccine have also failed

One promising vaccine had to be abandoned in haste when it emerged that in susceptible subjects the vaccine, far from protecting the patient, actually led to an aggravated form of the disease. Hopes for a vaccine diminished further when the virus demonstrated its ability to mutate, as a vaccine effective against the SS-A stay safe variant is unlikely to protect against the SS-N do safe variant.

Shocked by the virulence of the stay safe virus, and the rapidity with which it has spread, scientists have discovered that certain pre-existing conditions make it easier for the virus to attack.

Chief among these is the Safetyist Personality Disorder (SPD).

SPD is characterized by an overwhelming need to remove all threats both real and perceived, from the environment.

Affected individuals adopt a notion that we are all potential victims, and hold that we must protect ourselves at all times from not just risks, but triggers, which can act as proxies for risks. Psychiatrists believe that such a mindset is fertile ground for the stay safe virus to gain a hold, with the personality disorder feeding the virus, and the virus feeding the personality disorder.

The prognosis, both for patients infected with the stay safe virus, and societies engulfed by the stay safe pandemic, is poor.

Prevalence is estimated to be near 50% of the population. Infected individuals are likely to remain symptomatic indefinitely, and in so doing cause widespread social and economic collapse. The live performing arts and hospitality sectors will become impossible to sustain, and tourism will become non-existent. Large parts of the retail sector will fail as stay safe victims shun the shops. Education will become difficult, with a two tier system divided between Zoom and Cisco WebEx. Individual incomes will plummet, social ties will become non existent, and wider family will become a relic from the past.

Medicine, both past and present, has too many cures where the remedy is worse than the disease. Such fatal cures are all the more common in these kind of circumstances.

TEJ and PJ wonder when the history of the twin pandemics of 2020 comes to be written, whether it will be SARS-CoV-2, or the novel stay safe virus, that in the end did the most damage and caused the greatest harm.

P.S. This article in no way tries to undermine the dangers of covid 19, it is a light hearted and satirical way to tell people to be alert and not anxious.