Chapter One : Coronation
King Korona calls for a conference with all his cabinet heads and world leaders to measure their progress in achieving their goal, world domination. Read on to find out how exactly the viral government works and what plans they have in store for humanity
Location: COVID Office for Universal Growth using Humanity (COUGH) Headquarters, Virtual Viral Conference hall, New York.
Date: March 26, 2020
CNN (Corona News Network) brings you live, the video conference between corona leaders from across the world. In a stunning success, we have shifted our headquarters to New York, USA as of today. In other top news, a new King Korona has been appointed. Hailing from New York, it is an eccentric genius who is mutating at an extraordinary scale, and whose progeny has been at the forefront of the successes in the US. Let us go to the conference live.
King Korona: My fellow members of the COUGH, it is with great pleasure and pride that I bring to you the news that we have officially relocated our headquarters from China to the USA, with our sister branches working in full swing in Italy, Iran and other nations. As of today, our fellow brethren have managed to establish more than 82,000 human hosts, surpassing our beloved friends in China, who were once at the vanguard of this noble revolution. I speak to you from the cells of an immuno-compromised 82-year-old human host who has provided excellent conditions for my experiments, though I would have preferred British blue blood but it’s alright (*sigh*).
We are speaking today to discuss our current status in the global arena. I understand on the grounds of infectivity we’re doing much better than our arrogant ancestors SARS-Cov-1 ever did back in 2003, but do take note people, our threat level must not drop down to that of our flu friends. We are a novel breed of viruses and we shall remain so. We will first start off with reports from heads of various administrative offices. Then we will move on to the representatives from various countries. We will start off with our Head of Public Relations.
Kylie kill-youself, Head of public relations: Thank you so much, my beloved King. May I take this opportunity to express my admiration at how delightfully you have evolved, already serving as an inspiration for ..….
(*murmurs* …Son of a bacteriophage…. ruddy capsid licker)
King Korona: Vr. Breathless Barney, please turn off your mike. It is exactly because of this kind of tactless public behavior that you weren’t accepted into PR. And, Vr. Kylie, as pointed out, you may stop ‘capsid licking’ and talk to the point. Please continue.
Kylie: (slightly disgruntled) Umm, yes my King. My apologies. So as you all know, after many insults from SARS-Cov 1 sloths, pardon me, and a lot of efforts from our genetics team in restructuring our RNAs, the world has finally started calling us “the novel coronavirus, COVID-19” instead of SARS-2. We no longer live under their shadow anymore and have claimed our uniqueness. But recently due to some, very influential but dumb human hosts we were under the risk of a name change. I understand that the “Chinese virus” might be way too racist for our children, but thanks to our King and our colleagues in Europe, we would certainly avoid such a catastrophe. Remember the “Spanish flu” people, our poor H1N1 cousins had to work very hard to come out of that image. Hey, but at least our name is better than swine flu or bird flu. Imagine if we were called bat flu? Oh, the disgrace!
King Korona: Vr. Kylie, please refrain from side-tracking. I could have reproduced and destroyed 10,000 more host cells in the time you were rambling. Time is of the essence.
Kylie: Oh pardon me, my King. Our extraordinary success in the US, Europe and China has led to humans finally recognizing the seriousness of our threat. While this is good as far as our image is concerned, the countries, where we are at nascent stages of infection, seem to be preparing themselves better against us.
King Korona: This is worrisome. We have already suffered losses due to the actions of humans in countries like South Korea and Japan. Our success in the US has been mainly aided by the human king here. We need to hope that the other countries follow the examples of the US and Italy more than others. Meanwhile, we need to redouble our efforts to combat social distancing and humans in quarantine. I want to hear from our Head of Proliferation and Human Response.
What have been the recent developments in human response and what steps can we follow to steepen the curve?
Cough-blood Carl, Head of Proliferation and Human Response: Thank you, my King. Firstly, I would like to break the news that the humans are nowhere close to developing a vaccine against us. The unfortunate martyrs which have fallen prey to human testing have been brave and have not divulged too much information about our genome and how we function. This holds us in good shape and the curve would be booming big at least for a few weeks. While conventional medicine seems to have been accepted, all forms of alternative medicine are popping up all over the globe, especially in the oriental regions. Cow’s urine is all the rage in Indian markets. They are even hosting ‘gomutra’ parties. While we are grateful for these opportunities to proliferate, we are still testing out the effectiveness of cow’s urine against us. On the other side of the globe however, we’re facing a lot of success. Mainly due to the fact that half the population feel drinking bleach is going to get rid of us. Though now what we are worried about is that bleach might kill more people than us. Also, these humans have something called ‘meme’ and I’m not exaggerating but almost all of them are about us these days!
King Korona: Alright, I want to defer a detailed discussion on this topic to a later date with a few more experts. Let’s not forget the valuable lessons we learnt from Plague.inc, the one good thing those puny humans have developed first. Increase infectivity before lethality, let’s lie low for a few months and then we’ll show our true colors, what do you say Frank?
Frank fever-forever, Head of genetics and gene mutations: I am afraid that news is not as promising as we hope it to be at this point. Since the initial success of modifying our genome thus allowing us to jump from bats to humans, we have had very little success in further mutations. Our spies over at the influenza capital are trying to uncover the secret behind their very rapid unpredictable mutations. As not everyone is endowed with a natural ability such as our King, if our scientists do not come up with multiple strains, then by the time the humans figure out a vaccine, we will be finished. Only one type of vaccine might be enough to confer immunity against us for a very long time. But don’t fret folks, it will take more than a year to figure out our genome. By the time we hope to have more strains in the market. The department of genetics is also working toward a genome modification to make their pesky pets carriers too. But we are just not able to figure out a way currently…..except that cat….(starts muttering to himself regarding RNAs, ribosomes and animal genetics)
King Korona: Hem. Hem. Attention here, please. That is worrying news indeed. This just adds on to the urgent need to conquer all corners of the globe as soon as possible, lest the humans come up with a cure in time. This is a very crucial period. Now is when history decides whether we go down as the deadliest pandemic or a seasonal bat fling. Keep up the good work and if I may quote certain enlightened souls in India who have recognized our superiority, JAI CORONA. We’ll retire for a short break before we hear from our world representatives. Meanwhile, proliferate as much as possible!
