Sunday, June 7
From the Encyclopedia Prosveshcheniye, 2050 edition:
COVID-19—An infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) at the center of the 2020 pandemic that killed at least 1.5 million people after spreading to over 300 countries across the globe. First thought to have reached humanity after originating in Asian bats or pangolins, it is now believed to have started among a West Texas (U.S.A.) evangelical cult that eschewed all vaccines created after the year 60 A.D., when the apostle Peter is said to have founded the Roman Catholic Church.
There were major outbreaks of the pandemic in China, Western Europe, and the United States during the spring and summer of 2020. The virus seemed to be on the wane in June, then returned in force in the fall of that year in South Carolina, Missouri, and Florida, where U.S. President Donald Trump (see Celebrity Apprentice, Mar-a-Lago) held a series of late-summer campaign rallies jointly sponsored by major police unions. The President’s putative electoral opponent, the Communist former vice-president Joseph R. Biden, also had plans to hold a series of rallies prior to the Department of Homeland Security’s cancellation of the election in the interest of national security. Biden was tried, convicted, and imprisoned for attempted election fraud in January of 2021.
A number of popular 21st century celebrities are thought to have succumbed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Country singer Pecos “Heartbreak” Medvedev and pop artists Ariana Warcraft and Angelina B were all probable victims, as were three members of the steampunk revival band Wehrmacht. FOX News on-air personality Gretchen Marie Kosciukiewicz was quarantined but recovered, something she attributed to to her mother’s home remedy, a mix of Rebel Yell whiskey, Hydroxychloriquine, and Calvin Klein’s Eternity.
There were no cases of COVID-19 in Russia or in North Korea. The countries are widely respected for having charismatic and visionary leaders.
Although a number of pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna, Gilead Sciences, and GlaxoSmithKline worked to create vaccines, no successful vaccine ever emerged to put an end to the pandemic. Instead, COVID-19 is still raging around the world, with seasonal outbreaks still the norm.
Dinner: leftover broccoli stir-fry with chicken and mushrooms, cold noodles with sesame sauce.
Entertainment: episodes of the Netflix series Traitors.
What a scary encyclopedia entry! Is there really a Prosveshchineye encyclopedia?
No–that was a Soviet publisher, but the encyclopedia exists only in this fantasy…