A (COVID) Christmas Carol

A retelling of Charles Dickens story in the midst of the COVID pandemic

Preface

I have endeavored in this ghostly little story to raise the ghost of ideas, to create healthy communities and peoples. May the story haunt your houses pleasantly.

~your faithful epidemiologist mama, December 2021

Stave 1: Fauci’s Ghost

They are dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of their burial has been signed by the clergy, the clerk, the undertaker, and their mourners.

They were as dead as dead as doornails.

Did their friends and family know they were dead? Of course they did. How could it be otherwise? They were there for the nasal swab, the diagnosis of COVID-19, when shortness of breath first struck, for the scary moment when mere illness went to life-threatening disease; they were there for FaceTime good-byes, difficult medical decisions, and last breaths.

The mention of their funerals brings me back to the part I started from. There is no doubt they are dead - more than 800,000 of them. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

Scrooge! who dismissed this news as just the flu, raised a tight-fisted hand to the public health experts. Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, covetous, know-it-all.

Once upon a time - of all the good days of the year, on Christmas Eve - old Scrooge sat scrolling through his Facebook feed.

“A merry Christmas, neighbor! Health & happiness,” cried a cheerful voice. It was Scrooge’s epidemiologist neighbor. “Bah!” Said Scrooge. “Humbug!”

“A COVID-Christmas a humbug, neighbor!” Said the neighbor. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”

“I do” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas with the world shutting down again and another so-called variant of a silly virus. What reason do you have to be merry?”

“But we have testing and masks; vaccines and treatments,” said the epidemiologist. “What reason have you to be morose?”

Scrooge having no better answer on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah! Humbug!”

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to continue, the neighbor withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved opinion of himself. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in front of his biased and ill-informed news stations; and having scrolled though his Facebook feed again and again.

After liking all of anti-vaccination posts, he went to bed. And then let anyone explain to me, if they can, how it happened that Scrooge, saw in his Facebook profile picture not his own face, but the face of Tony Fauci.

“How now,” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?

“You will be haunted,” resumed the ghost of Fauci, “by three spirits.”

Much in need of repose and disgusted by his interactions with the ghost of Fauci, Scrooge went straight to bed without undressing or washing his hands, and fell asleep.

Stave 2: The first of three spirits

When Scrooge awoke it was so dark. Fauci’s ghost bothered him exceedingly. Was it a dream or not? At that moment, the curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. And he found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them. It was a strange figure— like a child: yet not so like a child, as like an old man.

“Who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“Long past?” Inquired Scrooge.

“No. Your past. Rise and walk with me!”

The Ghost of Christmas Past walked Scrooge to a window where Scrooge saw a child surrounded by toys beneath a huge Christmas tree. The floor was littered with wrapping paper.

“Good heaven!” Said Scrooge. “I was bred in this place. I was a boy here.”

“Do you remember the smell of smallpox?” The Spirit asked. “Or the itch of chickenpox? The suffocating lump of diphtheria? Or the deafness caused by measles?”

Scrooge looked confused. “No. I never had those diseases as a child.”

“Exactly,” said the Ghost. “Vaccines protected you as a child. They ensured that you would live past your fifth birthday and allowed you to celebrate many Christmases as a healthy child with your friends and family.”

The Ghost walked on and said, “Let us see another Christmas.”

Again Scrooge recognized himself and the scene from a Christmas long ago. The Ghost said, “you are about to go out sled-riding with your cousins on the new toboggan you received as a gift. And do you remember the paralysis of polio?”

“No!” Said Scrooge. “We went sledding and ice-skating that night.”

“Exactly,” said the Ghost. “No polio because you were vaccinated - three shots! Polio was eliminated from this country years because of effective vaccination campaigns.”

Scrooge was conscious of being exhausted and thankful for his health during his childhood. He realized he was back in his own bedroom (present day). And before he knew it, he sank into a heavy sleep.

Stave 3: The second of three spirits

Awaking in the middle of a snore, Scrooge awoke. He heard a strange voice call him by name, and bade him to enter the next room. He obeyed.

He entered a hospital. Beds were full. Coughs were loud. The hisses and beeps from ventilators echoed in every direction. Physicians, nurses, and visitors alike donned full PPE - masks, gowns, gloves, and face shields.

“Come in!” Exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! And know them better, man.”

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before the spirit.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!”

Scrooge reverently did so. He was also covered in full PPE.

“Spirit,” said Scrooge submissively, “conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson about vaccinations, which is working now. Tonight, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.”

“Touch my robe.” Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.

It was Christmas morning in the hospital. Everyone was still in full PPE. Visitors were limited to two per patient. And masking was required. Through gloves, family members held the hands of loved ones; good-byes were said, some over the phone; and last breaths were breathed with great effort and much regret. Physicians cried over the body of another life lost to COVID.

The daily tally was totaled. Another life lost.

Another unnecessary death of an unvaccinated individual.

The Ghost and Scrooge walked on. To a house unknown to Scrooge - but there was merriment and laughing from within. Vaccination cards were hung on the refrigerator and negative home COVID tests were on the table. The matriarch of the family declared, “A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us! And God bless the scientists that made the vaccines so that we could be together this year.”

Which all the family re-echoed.

“Thank God for the scientists, and the doctors, and the epidemiologists!” Said the tiniest one there, who was celebrating his new status as fully vaccinated against COVID. This little one sat close to the matriarch’s side, upon her little stool.

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if that little one will escape the pandemic alive with no long-term health effects.”

“Of course,” said the Spirit. “The vaccine prevents severe illness and hospitalization. That child will avoid quarantines and the long-term and debilitating effects of COVID.”

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of Dr. Fauci, and lifting his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, toward him.

Stave 4: The last of the Spirits

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible, save for one outstretched hand. Scrooge felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

"I am in the presence of the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come?" said Scrooge.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business people. Observing that the hand was pointed to them. Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.

“No,” said a man with a monstrous chin, “I don’t know much about it either way. I only know he’s dead. He died of COVID alone in the hospital. But before he died, he infected the infants at the daycare and the patient undergoing chemotherapy.”

“When did he die?” Inquired another.

“Last night, I believe. He occupied a bed in the ICU for two weeks unnecessarily before being overtaken by the virus.”

“Why, what was the matter with him?” Asked a third. “I thought he said it was ‘just the flu’ and that he was healthy as a horse. I thought he’d never die.”

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh among the group of vaccinated individuals.

“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; “for upon my life I don’t know of anyone to go to it that is not quarantined or ill and in isolation themselves.”

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. “I see. I see. The case of the unvaccinated man might be my own. My life tends that way now — unvaccinated; unwilling to trust modern medicine; and being adamant about not wearing a mask.

“Spirit,” he continued, “this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!”

The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet. They entered the house of a young couple.

It was quiet. Very quiet.

Whispers could be heard. Hushed talk of exposure, illness, preterm labor, and undeveloped lungs. The baby swing sat empty.

Scrooge knew in a moment that this was the home of the pregnant woman he sat beside in church a few weeks before. Both were unmasked. Both were unvaccinated.

And now - following a terrifying illness - she was no longer pregnant. Everyone wore black and eyes were red and swollen.

Mom had survived, but the unborn child was yet another victim of the pandemic.

Stave 5: The end of it

Yes! And the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own, to make amends in!

"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh, Tony Fauci. Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Tony; on my knees!

“I know what to do!” Cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!”

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog; no mist; bright, jovial stirring old; cold piping for the blood to dance to; Golden-sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!

“What’s today?” Cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy playing with a new remote controlled car in the street.

“Today,” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.”

“I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night,” said Scrooge.

He pulled out his phone and googled, “where can I get my COVID vaccine TODAY.”

He ran to his bedroom and found an old mask crumbled in the corner. He put it on. And then he ordered more from Amazon. They’d arrive in two days.

He went to his computer and wrote: Op-Ed’s in support of vaccines and masking in schools. He penned emails to pastors about being Good Samaritans through masking and vaccinations.

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; he sent thank you gifts to the hospital staff and brought friends and family to vaccine clinics.

He became as good as a friend, as good of a public health advocate, and as good as a human being, as the good city knew.

Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the principle of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, ever after wards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep communities healthy and prevention at the forefront of medicine. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as the epidemiologist observed, “Get vaccinated. Every one!”

The End.