Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Coping With Covid
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
In every direction, I am facing an empty horizon. I am at an airport on the Baja Peninsula on the edge of the Sea of Cortez, waiting for a missing Cessna Citation to fly me to Mexico City. My travels are on hold until my ride shows up or a replacement pilot and plane can be located.
Quarantined for no reason, without reason. As random as contracting Covid.
Heat mirages shimmer off the airport’s weedy, tar-black runway. A limp windsock is as bored as I am. One rickety vending machine with a selection of stale candy—which I have sampled a dozen times—is my only entertainment. In open rebellion, no two wall clocks agree on the time.
From under a cracked, plastic seat I snag a week-old Houston Chronicle. An Associated Press story reports on an American death cult whose followers are rejecting free, life-saving Covid vaccines.
Millions of Americans, the article says, have bought into a Rubric’s Cube of interlocking lies and superstitions, myths and mendacities about medical science. It’s like the 17th-century Dutch Tulip Mania if tulips could kill you.
With virulent stupidity, Republican politicians and Fox News are killing off their supporters. Trump-voting states have the lowest vaccinations rates in the country.
In a corner of the airport’s small waiting room, a boatload of sunburnt fishermen cluster to compare machismos—as measured in fish inches. I can’t avoid overhearing about their sport-fishing exploits, their women, their politics.
A choleric voice attached to burly, bloated man is loudest above the din. He is vehement. To hear him tell it, smartass liberals don’t respect his beliefs, his personal freedoms. “No one is going to force me to stick a needle in my arm.”
Now he railing against cancel culture. If I had the courage to debate idiots in public, I’d ask him how he feels about the ultimate cancel culture, death.
In my high school teaching days, I might have tried to understand these death-seekers. To dialogue. To educate. To persuade. To save lives.
Lately, I’ve become more Trumpian, less tolerant. Let the anti-vaxxers martyr themselves. The fastest, cheapest, easiest solution for hospital bed shortages is letting the Covid-diseased die quickly. Prohibit the use of tax dollars to treat unvaccinated Covid victims. Pre-approval to any anti-vaxxer requesting assisted suicide.
No more feigning a humanity I no longer feel. No more counterfeit empathy. In evangelical terms, recognize Covid as God’s punishment for Trump Republicans.
The cantankerous loudmouth throwing the Trumpy tantrum is right about one thing. Even fishless and forsaken—where is that damn plane—I am smarter than he is. Science, truth, facts, reality are my religion—the faith commandments of a proud coastal elite.
Mr. Anti-Vaxxer heads to the men’s room. I fantasize about following him. I see us arguing, shouting, shoving. He slips, falls, cracks his head on a urinal. I leave. He bleeds out. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times—in movies.
In the survivalist part of my heart—the selfish, hateful part—I want Mr. Anti-Vaxxer to go to the Big Fish Pond in the Sky. For the same reason I kill cockroaches, I want him dead. Both spread pathogens.
