Fictional works about apocalyptic diseases have been popular for decades, from Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, to The Walking Dead, from Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven to the Danish series The Rain (and many, many more…)
We’ve enjoyed watching people run for their lives, whilst grabbling with deep questions of humanity, have enjoyed super smart scientists in high-tech labs figuring out the riddling questions of their respective pandemics.
Now the actual pandemic falls short towards those works of fiction on several levels.
Thing is, the pandemic is boring in comparison to the fictionalized apocalypse. There are no zombies chasing us (like in The Walking Dead), we aren’t part of a top-secret government program (like in The Andromeda Strain) and we haven’t developed a gremlin-like fear of getting wet (Like the characters in The Rain, where the virus is contained in the … yeah you might have guessed it …).
For those of us who’ve been lucky enough to have been spared the direct impact on our lives and livelihoods – we just sit in our homes, we bake bread, take pictures of the bread we bake, post the pictures of the bread on social media, look at the pictures of the bread that other people bake …
What’s the difference between the Corona Pandemic and those works of fiction?
The Speed
The viruses which cause the fictionalized pandemics, spread fast and kill fast.
While the Corona Virus moves in sneaky ways (aka aerosols & super spreaders) turning it into a fast-moving, global problem (unlike its cousins SARS and MERS), while it’s a more proficient killer than the flu (even if some people might try to tell us otherwise), it falls short behind those fictionalized super viruses that kill with a single glance in the eye (o wait, that’s the basilisk on Harry Potter) - but you get the drift.
The great plan behind it all
For many if not all pandemic stories there is some great conspiracy of government or terrorist groups or secret societies (which might even turn out to the same thing), which use the virus to achieve some evil goal.
A good conspiracy theory is helpful in explaining this unfair world. And let’s face it, the pandemic is the height of unfairness. Maybe that’s what brings the already Pre-COVID, hot to the boiling conspiracy belief of people to explode right now. Because wouldn’t it be nicer if there was some reason, like for example that the virus is made up by the deep state or that it spreads via 5G, and it’s possible to protect yourself by putting tinfoil around your head? For some people it seems better to believe in scenarios so ludicrous no sane fiction writer would dare to dream them up, than just accepting the evolutionary coincidence of a mutation event, of a jump from the unknown animal to the unknown patient zero to cause all the trouble we’re facing.
The world after
And then there’s the lack of perspective. In the typical pandemic story, disaster strikes, and the world is never the same after. And you don’t have to worry about keeping your job or about finding a supermarket that still stocks toilet paper, because you’re running from zombies, or evil rain, or your fellow humans who’ve turned hostile by lack of resources. The characters in pandemic stories don’t experience Pandemic Fatigue – when would they find the time. In the alternative scenario of the pandemic setting we find the disaster averted, after the super smart scientist saves the day and the world can return to normal.
What we experience is a slow-moving disaster that many people can’t even grasp. We know that fall and winter will be hard. We know to expect the next wave. But we just want it to be over with. And the super smart scientists that are working their asses off, to create vaccines and drugs, are smart enough to tell us we need to wait a little longer until disaster is averted.
Suggestions for the pandemically fatigued?
If you can - stay at home.
Bake some more bread.
Read an apocalyptic novel (recommendations welcome).
Go for a run and imagine hostile zombies/ rain/ people are after you to increase your running speed…