I just saw this on Twitter:
This person, Alexis Madrigal, is a writer for the Atlantic, and this is his penance for committing the sin of Getting Covid.
Look at the way his tweet is worded. “Maybe reading about my mistakes can help you with your decision making.”
Heed my tale as a warning, all ye readers.
This guy believes he got Covid because he strayed from the path of the righteous. And he’s telling you his story so that you may avoid his “mistakes.”
I think it was Michael Malice who first noticed this phenomenon of these ultraliberals who are terrified of getting Covid, not because they’re afraid of dying, but because they feel that getting Covid means they’ve done something morally wrong.
Getting Covid means they disobeyed the rules. They failed to follow the almighty CDC guidelines.
And I guess this article is Madrigal’s way of public self-flagellation to atone for his mistakes.
Forgive me, Anthony Fauci!
Forgive me, Joe Biden!
What was Madrigal’s mistake that led to him getting Covid? Well, you may be horrified to learn that in his selfishness, he decided to attend a friend’s wedding.
At first I wasn’t even going to read the article, figuring the cringe and stupidity would be too much to handle. But I have an obligation to you, the wonderful reader, to subject myself to this kind of drivel.
And it was a fascinating glimpse into the mind of “the other side.” The people who have been brainwashed by media fear porn; who have been immunized, not against Covid but against reality.
I’m still not 100% sure this article isn’t an elaborate, Babylon Bee-esque parody, because it is functionally indistinguishable from one.
But let’s operate under the assumption that it is sincere, and that there really are people out there that think and live this way.
Madrigal begins by telling us how his story of succumbing to temptation began: with an invite to a friend’s wedding in New Orleans. He then lets us know–as if there were any doubt–that he is vaccinated:
The downside, of course, was the risk of exposure to COVID. Sure, I’m vaccinated—two shots of Pfizer—and the wedding’s other attendees would all be vaccinated too.
In the very near future, I have a feeling these types of people are going to be including their vaccine status alongside their preferred pronouns. “Joe Smith, he/him, 3 shots Pfizer.”
But hey, a 100% vaccinated wedding. In theory, what does he have to worry about? The vaccine should “protect” everyone, right?
But breakthrough cases happen, and we’d be in New Orleans in October, a place where cases were still high and vaccination was inconsistent. One could not expect to not get exposed to COVID.
The irony of this sentence following the sentence above was apparently completely lost on Madrigal.
But then I reasoned both with myself and with my wife. COVID was unlikely to kill me, a vaccinated 39-year-old endurance athlete. I would be fine, and even if I gave the coronavirus to any of my family members, they too would almost certainly be fine. My wife is vaccinated, and our young children’s risk of serious illness, while not nonexistent, is very low.
Your wife is cheating on you with a guy who isn’t a cowering beta.
At least he kind of gets it. He understands that Covid isn’t going to kill him.
I don’t get what he’s so terrified of here.
He waffles on the decision for a while, hoping to just quietly ignore the invite and not go to the wedding, but apparently 39 years of brainwashing and liberalism hadn’t fully destroyed his inner Normal Person. His subconscious desire to to Live, Have Fun and Actually Be A Human Being won out:
But for some reason, one morning in early October, I got the “last call” email about the wedding and I revisited the prospect. Everything was beginning to seem more and more normal. The radio station where I host a show was encouraging people to come back into the office. I saw laughing, maskless people in my social-media feeds and in restaurant windows. The Delta-variant surge was easing in most places. Cases were coming down. The really vulnerable were getting boosters. Kid vaccinations were on the horizon. Filled with a surge of love for my friends and New Orleans and a sense that, you know what, I’m ready to nose out into a new tier of risk, I booked a flight; I’d be going solo.
Yeah, his wife’s definitely cheating on him. “Oh you go to the wedding, honey. I’ll stay back. My personal trainer Chad will help with the kids.”
What a sad line in this paragraph, though: “I saw laughing, maskless people in my social media feeds and in restaurant windows.”
I can just picture him walking down the street, Masked Up™, glancing forlornly into restaurant windows at smiling, maskless people eating, drinking and reveling in the joy of not being brainwashed losers.
As the day approached, my wife and I had not run through every scenario. I still was not precisely sure how the wedding would work, COVID-wise. My friend is a doctor, and I knew the crowd would mostly be New York and California people. There would be no anti-vaxxers among the guests, and the invitation said they’d follow the local public-health protocols.
Yeah, no dirty flyover-Trump-country Racists™ in attendance. Gotta be sure to point that out, as if it weren’t already abundantly clear that the vaccine is really about conferring social status and signifying political obedience.
I walked in and saw that people were all inside, fairly densely packed in a big room. No one was wearing a mask. Everyone was celebrating like people who haven’t seen one another for a long time, ready for a wedding weekend in the greatest city in America. For some reason, I was shocked.
I don’t know why I didn’t expect it to look like that. Maybe I thought we’d be in a garden under some nice string lights, mostly keeping masks on, in that maybe it helps way. I almost turned around and begged off the night of drinks, figuring that the next day would be less risky.
Even at a wedding full of fear porn-consuming, vaccinated liberal New Yorkers and Californians, presumably many of them doctors and Experts™, this guy still manages to be the biggest pussy of them all.
But I’d come all that way. Here were my friend’s family and closest friends, the woman he’d fallen in love with. I just couldn’t do it. And all the everyone is vaccinated reasoning started to play in my head. I ordered a tequila and soda, pushed breakthrough infections out of mind, made some new friends, and had a great time.
Tequila soda? Sus. Very sus.
But hey, at least he managed to overcome his paralyzing fear of Covid to actually have a good time. You wonder how long it’s been since this guy has truly lived and enjoyed life.
The wedding was maskless too. But in a huge, airy, gorgeous building. There was a second line through the streets, and people danced and waved white handkerchiefs with the names of the bride and groom. We wore tuxedos and listened to old-time music at Preservation Hall and made jokes and got a little drunk, mostly hanging around outside. When that part ended, a bunch of people went next door to a huge party spot, but I left as soon as I saw the piano-bar-and-club scene there.
Gotta bail at that point. Way too risky.
My wife was rightfully getting worried. It seemed not unlikely that I’d get exposed to COVID. Had we really been thinking clearly? Had we really wanted to take on that level of risk? Honestly, once I’d been in the situation, the realness started to unfurl. Outside the wedding events, I’d followed our protocols from home, staying outside, masking inside, etc. But attending the wedding was much riskier than I’d wanted to admit before I’d done it.
It is going to be years before this guy can live a normal life. Maybe decades, honestly. The Covid fear porn has done a serious number on him.
Walking back across the city, the energy of wanting things to be normal was thick. I felt it too. After spending so much of my time studying COVID, being a part of the response with the COVID Tracking Project, and writing many stories about the pandemic, I was over it. I was done. I don’t know that I could have admitted that to myself, but I just wanted it all to go away. And there in New Orleans, for a few days, it seemed like it had. Just look at all those people singing at the piano bar, dancing to Lizzo, arm in arm with friend and stranger alike.
Ah, a Lizzo reference. Very mainstream, very progressive, very I’m Not A Racist. Duly noted.
The desire to live like a normal human being is still there, though, pulling him towards the piano bar–towards normalcy. But he didn’t give in.
Dr. Fauci, if you’re reading, I resisted. I wanted to go have fun with all my friends at the piano bar, but then I thought of you, and your Guidelines.
The next day, away from the wedding and visiting with my best friend, it became more and more obvious. My wife and I needed a plan for my return. I’d do a rapid PCR test at the airport. At least that would get me somewhere.
CRISIS MODE.
My kids were so happy to see me, and after my negative result came back, to hug me.
Come on, dude. You are not real.
No hugging daddy until his negative test results come in, children! You know the rules. As Dr. Fauci says, we need to socially distance!
Was I actually safe? No, I knew I was not. I should have quarantined. But I had stuck my wife with the kids for four days, and I wanted to get back in the mix and help. That seemed like the right thing to do.
No shit.
On Monday, I felt fine, but I took an antigen test anyway (negative). I scheduled a PCR test for the next day. By the time my appointment arrived, I’d started to have some postnasal drip and what felt like a possibly psychosomatic tickle in my throat. Tuesday night—four days after the wedding—my PCR result came back negative, and despite having what felt like a cold, I figured I was pretty close to being in the clear.
But then, disaster struck.
The next day, my symptoms were about the same. I did an intense Peloton workout and it felt fine, though maybe my legs were a little slow.
Of course he has a Peloton. What kind of Vaxxed™, Masked™, Lizzo-listening California liberal would he be if he didn’t have a Peloton? Can’t go to the gym–far too risky.
I wasn’t eager to test again; a negative PCR test seemed good enough. But my wife heard me cough—one of only maybe 20 coughs throughout my whole sickness—and said, “Couldn’t you take another antigen test?”
I was on the phone with a young geographer, talking about doing research at Bay Area libraries, and kind of absentmindedly did the swabbing. When I looked down a few minutes later, I had tested positive. Maybe a false positive? I immediately took another antigen test and the little pink line was practically red, it was so dark. Wrapping up the call, I packed my things quickly, texted my wife the result, walked outside with an N95 mask on, and waited for all hell to break loose.
He left his family instantly without saying goodbye. This guy.
It’s okay, I’m sure his wife will be fine with the kids. Her nice personal trainer Chad will help out around the house.
I was able to find a long-term rental on our block thanks to an angelic neighbor. I set my bags down inside and tried to figure out what I had to do. The worst-case scenario that I’d imagined was that I’d get sick, mildly, as I did. I ended up taking one day off from work, and even that was more of a precaution. I felt pretty sick, like when you have a cold, but I’ve probably been sicker 15 times as an adult. As someone who has thought so much about COVID science, it was almost interesting to experience: Oh! That’s what losing your smell is like.
I think he means Science™, not science.
But the real worst-case scenario was everything that happened to the people around me. My kids had to come out of school and isolate with my wife. A raft of tests had to be taken by everyone I’d had even limited contact with. (I was one of at least a dozen people at the wedding who got sick.) I had been with several older people, including my mother-in-law. For my wife and children, the tests went on for days and days, each one bringing a prospective new disaster and 10 to 14 more days of life disruption or worse.
No one would ever be the same again.
But for me, the very worst part was my children. They knew, cognitively, that I was vaccinated and unlikely to get really sick. That said, COVID-19, for them, is a terrible thing. The past year and a half of their lives has been disrupted by this virus. They take precautions every single day not to have this happen.
I feel so bad for these kids.
They reacted in different ways. My 8-year-old could barely look at me—maybe out of anger, maybe out of fear.
Yeah, because her psychotic parents instilled in her the belief that getting Covid is a result of moral failure.
My 5-year-old daughter proved her status as the ultimate ride-or-die kid. She brought a chair down the street so she could sit 20 feet away from me outside in her mask, as I sat on the porch in an N95. I’m not sure which reaction was more heartbreaking. It was as if one never wanted to see me again and the other didn’t want to let me out of her sight.
This is legitimately sad.
These vaccines are amazing. I was and am fine.
There’s no chance he would’ve survived without the vaccine.
For people pondering edging back into normal life, or trying to jump in headfirst as I did, it’s easy to do the risk calculation only about physical health; that’s really what this was about for so long. But the vaccines changed that, and we need to update our mental spreadsheets. The life disruption—the logistical pain you cause those around you—is now a major part of any bad scenario. As I write this, I’m now 10 days past my first symptoms, but I continue to test positive on antigen tests, and so I have not returned home. I haven’t hugged my kids for 10 days. They missed a whole week of school, and my wife’s work life got turned upside down—even though they never tested positive or got sick. I blame no one but myself for this. We cannot will this pandemic to be over. Lord knows I tried.
The only thing now to do is to whip yourself like that weird guy in the Da Vinci Code:
In social worlds like mine, though, where most people do work from home, where people have minimized risk and gotten vaccinated, we’re at a weird moment. Things aren’t likely to change that much for quite some time. Even after however many kids get vaccinated, there will still be breakthrough infections. Other variants could spread.
He doesn’t even realize how ridiculous he sounds here.
“Even after however many kids get vaccinated, there will still be breakthrough infections.”
Imagine saying that about any other vaccine–polio, smallpox, measles, etc.
Right now most policies appear designed to make life seem normal. Masks are coming off. Restaurants are dining in. Planes are full. Offices are calling. But don’t be fooled: The world’s normal only until you test positive.
No, dude, you’re just a freak. People are going back to normal with or without you. They’re sick of this bullshit.
Not everyone thinks like your crazy ass.
Look at this follow-up tweet:
Right, he absolutely would not have survived if he wasn’t vaccinated.
Do these people even realize how ridiculous they sound saying this shit?
You got Covid. The vaccine did not do it’s job.
They really just believe everything they’re told, don’t they?
The takeaway here, of course, is that this guy absolutely should not have gone to the wedding. That was his great moral failing.
Let his story be a warning to you, dear reader, of just what can happen when you disobey Anthony Fauci.