Half the people I know are sniffling, hacking, sneezing; and the other half are getting over it. Is it colds? the flu? sinusitis? For the last two weeks, I’ve had something wicked that’s had unfortunate and not entirely related sequelae (I use that word, “sequelae” every chance I get), and when I told the nurse I thought it was flu, she said if it was, I’d be the first one in the state and since I’m not first in anything, bad or good, it must not have been the flu. No matter. I think I’m clawing my way back to normal. This first ran January 21, 2015.
Q: Oh, you’re a doctor! Oh good! I need a doctor. I had the flu shot but I’ve got the flu anyway. I feel like roadkill looks.
A: You do know, don’t you, that since this year’s flu shot is only 23% effective, you had an 89% chance of getting the flu.
Q: Is that math quite right? Never mind, regardless of math, I’ve definitely got the flu and I’d put my faith in the flu shot and I’ve been betrayed. So why, when I got the flu shot, did I still get the flu?
A: First you have to understand that flu counts as flu only if you show up at a doctor’s office, an emergency room, or a morgue. Otherwise, you’re on your own and who knows what you’ve got.
Q: I’ve got the flu. Would you please just answer my question. Why did I get the flu?
A: Because you got the flu bug. The flu bug is little mud-colored toothy demons, so tiny that when you get them on your skin they sneak through the pores and run around inside your body biting things and clogging things up.
Q: Are you sure about that?
A: Yes. And you’ll have to understand that what a flu shot does is, inject little tiny seraphim with flaming swords at the bottoms of your pores and the seraphs find the demons and swap them right out of the game. It’s all-out holy warfare.
Q: Really!
A: Yes. So this year’s flu shot injected only one twenty-third of the usual number of seraphs.
Q: But you said the flu shot was 23 % effective. Is one twenty-third the same as 23 %?
A: Yes. And that means that for every seraph, there’s 72 flu demons, enough to overwhelm the righteous. Unchecked, the demons suck out your vital juices. They fill you to your toes with stuff that not even fish could breathe through. And they remove your generous soul and in its place they leave a cornered rat with a head cold.
Q: You know, your math is really bad and your metaphors are worse. I have my doubts about you . . .
A: Unworthy doubt is just another side effect of the demons — they deactivate all but three brain neurons and you can’t think worth shit.
Q: . . . and besides, those demons and seraphim sound like you never made it out of the 14th century.
A: The flu is the veritable incarnation of the 14th century. You have no curative medications, your palliatives are pathetic. You can forget your touching 21st century notions of understanding and control. You’ve reverted to the ancient mud. You live your days in pain, ignorance, and despair.
Q: Are you really a doctor of any kind?
A: Depending on your century, possibly no.
Q: I didn’t think so. I’m going to sit here in my 21st century misery and think about astronomy instead.
A: Oh sure. Like the gravitational signals in the fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background aren’t pretty much the same as seraphim.
Q: Maybe so. But sooner or later they’re going to be visible even to the unbeliever, and the verifiable universe is a profound relief from the Late Medieval.
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder – The Fall of the Rebel Angels; via Wikimedia Commons