COVID-19 — A pop quiz

Talk about being “All in This Together!” Unlike any time in memory, all kids – regardless of grade level, age, race, creed, color, national origin, or immigration status – are enrolled in the very same course as their parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors, and probation officers, i.e., with all of us.

The course is COVID 101 and it’s been in session for the entire spring term, with no end in sight.  For those who’ve been cutting class (you know who you are), this Pop Quiz might inspire you to get ready for the Final Exam, to be administered to all Plague survivors in a community-wide Zoom meeting at a future date TBD. Ready?

True or False:

• Population density increases everyone’s odds of catching COVID and dying, which reduces population density & increases everyone else’s odds of not dying.
• “Contact tracing” is the process for finding, testing, and isolating (for 14 days ) everyone an infected person came within six feet of in the previous 14 days, as well as everything they may have touched or sneezed on in that time and any persons who (in or out of their presence) may have touched any of those things, appropriately or otherwise, while COVID was on them.  
• Those with underlying medical conditions are at greater risk from a COVID-19 infection. 
• Stupidity is an underlying medical condition. 
• Each person who picked, raised, slaughtered, prepared, packed, loaded, shipped, unloaded, warehoused, transported, and/or stocked store shelves with the groceries in that bag delivered to your door first washed their hands for a full 20 seconds.
• If it can be shown that, in willful defiance of shelter-in-place orders, you contracted COVID and passed it to someone who, as a result, lost work and income, incurred steep medical bills, and infected his/her family members who suffered similar fates and/or died, you may receive hand-delivered correspondence from numerous members of the Sonoma County Bar Association. 
• An “essential business” is one providing a good or service that you, members of your household, large corporations, or excessively wealthy persons want-or-need-right-now-goddammit! Like chocolate.
• “Social Distancing” is simply common social etiquette, whereby underpaid Essential Employees of an enterprise expose themselves to the deadly coronavirus on the job while the CEO works distantly from home.

Multiple Choice:

• Which of the following have been promoted by our President as a COVID cure: (a) hydrochloroquine (b) essential oils (c) bleach injections (d) dynamite (e) all of the above.
• CDC says that ethical considerations require that vaccines against COVID cannot be approved for use until they are first safety-tested on (a) bats (b) the White House press corps (c) anti-vaxxers (d) Americans eager to meet Jesus.
• The first COVID infection has been traced to a human who (a) ate bats (b) kissed a Republican (c) kissed a bat-eating Republican (d) voted Republican.
• “Testing negative” for COVID means (a) you are now immune to COVID, (b) you don’t have COVID (c) you don’t have COVID yet (d) you took the wrong test.
• Which most enhances your Zoom-meeting image? (a) a full-bookshelf background (b) camera focused up your nostrils (c) camera focused down your blouse (d) unleashed toddlers raging in the background.

Answers to this Pass/Fail quiz will appear in a future issue. All anyone needs to do to Pass is to still be around to read them. So let’s all study hard Together, and cheat like hell.