Prompt Writing: "The virus was born in Wuhan"

Disclaimer: The events of this story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people, places or happenings is due to the author’s complete lack of originality.

The virus was born in Wuhan. There are theories about what caused it - a freak of nature, perhaps, or a virology experiment gone wrong - but no concrete proof has been found either way. Besides, we have far more pressing problems to deal with first. As I was saying, the virus was born in Wuhan, but it didn’t stay there forever. It spread, and it spread, and it spread, until it had reached every corner of China, from the beetle-frying, puppy-boiling kitchen of a popular restaurant in Beijing, to a store in Shanghai that sold fans and parasols made in Japan as exotic Chinese paraphernalia to unsuspecting tourists. Still, China’s government turned a blind eye to it, unhelpful and unsympathetic.

By the end of the year, the contagion had reached Spain, USA, India, more countries than I can venture to name. It was given the name COVID - CO for Corona, the virus’ family, VI for virus, and D for disease. Ignoring it was no longer an option. Instead, terms like “contact tracing” and “vaccine testing” began to jump out from every newspaper’s headline, the once-low demand for masks and sanitiser bottles shot through the roof, and a man in Uttar Pradesh made a fortune selling magical cow urine that, once swallowed, would supposedly grant its drinker immunity from the virus.

Despite thousands of statements to the contrary from brainy boffins across the globe, people persisted in believing that the threat was temporary, and would be gone in mere months’ time. They continued to live their lives as they pleased, sanitising their hands every now and then and wearing their masks below their chins and demanding of anyone who questioned them, “what’s the point in staying home when this virus will be gone in a couple of weeks anyway? Just chill out.”

Alas, those boffins were right. Before long, hospitals everywhere were filled to the brim with the infected, while the few and fortunate healthy stayed locked up at home, now too afraid to step out even to buy groceries. In Italy, deaths surpassed availability of graves by so much that rotting corpses lined the streets of every city. In the USA, President Trump announced 99% of COVID cases were “totally harmless” as people coughed to death three blocks away. And in North Korea, any civilian found infected with the virus, be they adult or child, was allegedly shot dead on the spot to prevent further diffusion. The entire world was in pandemonium.

When we had just about given up hope on our lives ever returning to normal, though, we discovered a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. A vaccine was released. 13 different vaccines, in fact, from the AstraZeneca’s sought-after Covishield to the Russian Federation’s Sputnik V, which might as well have been cow urine for the public’s lack of faith in it.

The rich were vaccinated first, of course. They carried out their own form of contact tracing, locating doctors and hospital owners and vaccine suppliers to beg of and borrow from and bribe. The middle class, too, were soon vaccinated by corporate, neighbourhood and government sponsored drives. Last came the poor, who gratefully accepted whichever cure was available to them, be it a sealed vial of Covishield or a random plastic box containing an unknown florescent liquid. Soon, there weren’t many who remained unvaccinated. There was the Texan Patrick Patriot, who refused to be injected with a serum that would supposedly make him autistic. There was the Tamilian Shailaja Swami, who had heard from her neighbour that the vaccines were made in China, “just like every other piece of kuppai in this world,” and would probably be the death of them all. There was the British Con Spirator, who declared to anybody who wanted to listen - and even those who didn’t - that Bill Gates had planted a chip in every dose of the vaccine, and could now monitor the activity of vaccinated individuals.

Despite this handful of fools, the majority of the global population was fully vaccinated by the beginning of 2023. We celebrated, believing we were safe, imagining we were finally, finally free of the menace that had plagued our lives since 2020. We had no means of knowing, then, of the decades of agony to come. Of the hundreds of mutations, the thousands of onslaughts, the millions of deaths. We had no means of knowing that this was only the beginning.