An apple a day no longer keeps the doctor away in the Big Apple.
“In New York City, the slightest runny nose has people canceling holiday gatherings and lining up for hours outside coronavirus testing centers,” according to an article in the New York Times.
The common cold is giving famously tough New Yorkers “overwhelming anxiety” as they deal with the stark reality that ritual cleansing with masks, vaccines, and boosters hasn’t propitiated COVID.
Their great shamans — Fauci, Levine, et al. — are failing, and a scratch in the throat is beginning to feel almost like an encounter with the mysterium tremendum itself.
“Having other ailments in the middle of a pandemic feels almost like an insult,” one thirty-two-year-old woman told the New York Times. “I have thought so much about this disease for the past two years that any potential brush with it feels a bit monumental.”
The woman took “three at-home coronavirus tests — all negative — since she came down with an apparent cold last week.”
The take-home COVID exam has begun to have a narcotic effect on New Yorkers, the Times reported: “Some people keep burning through at-home coronavirus swabs just to stay calm.”
As New Yorkers’ fear becomes “disproportionate and all-consuming,” the contours of a permanent biomedical security state are becoming clear.
“If it is not Covid, we still don’t want these other viruses spread around,” a doctor told the Times. “It is still prudent to stay home, and the same mitigation measures that will help Covid from spreading are likely to help stop these.”
Medical professionals are advising neurotic New Yorkers to further isolate themselves to avoid even mild symptoms, and therapists are advising them that “it’s OK to feel anxiety, it’s OK to feel low, it’s OK to feel some distress.”
But even New Yorkers are sensing there is something wrong.
“You are wearing a mask and you’re hiding from people and you’re absolutely miserable and you’re so worried,” another woman told the Times. “The minute I hack people wince being around you — and I do it too.”
