Zombie Bites

Last updated on February 26, 2025

So, we’re back at the part of the collapse of western civilization where pathogens are going to play a massive role in how things work out. We’ve got both Influenza A and B making unseasonably long stays, and COVID is still very much alive and well. But, we’re also seeing another rash of Stupid Behavior from Certain Demographics.

You know the people I’m talking about. They’re the ones that would hide the fact that they got bit by a zombie just so they could get access to safe shelter, not thinking about the danger they’re posing to everyone else.

Selfish people.

Shitty people.

People with very little in the way of true self-awareness and even less in collectivist consciousness.

Illness as a Moral Failing?

Way, way back in the bad old days (yes, even before Reagan and Thatcher), there was an attitude mainly proposed by the Church that illness, disease, and infirmity were evidence of immorality. This was actually a continuation (and something of a perversion) of Plato’s statement that “immorality is to the soul what disease is to the body.” We still see this everywhere with ableism being almost a core tenet of most Christian variations, but most especially (American) Christian Nationalism. The preoccupation with the sick being cured and the disabled being restored to perfect bodies (thank Aquinas for expounding on that idea) after the Second Coming is a significant driving factor in much of the “secular” and Evangelical Christian attitudes in the West.

This platform informs a lot of response in subtle ways that directly impact our everyday life: people living in this culture feel guilty for getting sick. It doesn’t matter how much we learn and know about the transmission of pathogens and diseases and so forth. That’s all logical. Guilt and shame for being unclean are irrational emotional identity problems, and oh so many people have that in oodles.

And that translates into assuming that other people who get sick have committed sins and behaved immorally. In a different but related vein, illness occurs as an “action-failure”, a circumstance where a person could have taken the right actions and steps to prevent illness (washing hands, masking up, eating well, getting exercise, etc.) but they didn’t, so they’re sick, and it’s their own damn fault.

Gods, how our culture loves victim-blaming…

This weird suffusion of ableism throughout our culture impacts how we treat addictions (I’ve discussed elsewhere the true nature of addiction), mental health, both profound and subtle disabilities, transient diseases, and even whether or not we provide assistance to the elderly.

Hiding the Bite

So, this fundamental internalized ableism doesn’t just nudge people, it wholly interferes with the capacity to make rational decisions as members of a community. (I have another rant in the wings about the difference between individualism and collectivism.) When you’re so consumed with whether or not you’re a “good person” because you’ve come down with an illness, you miss the opportunity to actually be a “good person” and fail to protect other people.

Why, yes, there was a recent event that triggered this rant! Glad you asked!

Our housemate (HM) went on a road trip last week with a friend (RTF) with whom she hadn’t road-tripped with before, and I didn’t know about the trip soon enough to do anything other than make a whole bunch of masks for HM to use. She also ordered some disposables, and y’all know what a fan I am of double-masking in high risk environments. HM and party were going to a convention in another state, and Con Crud is a very real thing – usually a combination of multiple pathogens hitting a system all at once. Mask up, wash your hands, you know the drill.

Well, RTF was sneezing and coughing a lot, gobbling Halls Vapo-Drops like Tic-Tacs at a kissing booth, but they said it was probably just allergies, changing states, stuff like that. HM and RTF met up with another friend there (MTA) who developed cold-like symptoms on the second day and felt kinda crappy. RTF and MTA are both older – late 50s, early 60s – and HM is mid-30s, but HM is justifiable paranoid about being exposed to COVID, flu, or any other pathogen.

See, if HM brings home the cooties, even if she’s asymptomatic, she can pass it on to Daniel. Daniel isn’t as fragile as he used to be, but he still has very low-response nociception, so he doesn’t do things like cough unless it’s serious. More importantly, Daniel has a speech therapist and a physical therapist who come around at least twice a week, and those two ladies have other pediatric clients who are very fragile and immune-compromised.

MTA and RTF were feeling so low-energy and crappy that they called the trip short by two days, and HM got home Sunday night.

Monday, MTA confirmed that she tested positive for COVID.

Tuesday, RTF confessed that she’d been having problems smelling and tasting even before the road trip.

Lucky for us, we’re a family of paranoid motherfuckers, and we had HM start an aggressive quarantine as soon as she got home. We sprayed everything down with MicroBan, washed everything in hot water and sanitizer, and she’s been relegated to the game room for a week. She has to mask when she comes down, and while she tested negative on Tuesday for COVID and both flu strains, her last date of potential exposure was Sunday, so we can’t be sure that she’s in the clear until Thursday at the earliest. She’ll retest then and we’ll decide how to proceed. She’s not symptomatic, but there’s always a window of contagion potential just before symptoms start, and we’re not taking any chances.

I politely asked HM to rip RTF a new asshole on my behalf the next time they spoke because what kind of a selfish jerk endangers themselves and others over an optional trip?! One that they didn’t even stay for all of because they felt so crappy?!?

I can think of at least a dozen rationalizations that were made – getting out of the house and away from what appears to be some toxic relationships is exciting, taking a trip for a favorite hobby is awesome, hanging out with great people like HM is a real treasure – but how would RTF feel if we weren’t so goddamned paranoid, and then we find out that one of the therapists’ clients died from COVID or the flu? Because that’s something that happens.

One of Daniel’s classmates, in fact, in 2021 contracted COVID and died just before the school year started: a medically fragile child who was unable to wear a mask was exposed by a well-meaning stranger at church.

It Sucks That It’s A Full-Blown Trope

Nothing that I’ve described above is a new story. Nothing that I’ve explained is unknown or ground-breaking. In fact, the tendency to hide our illness/weakness is so common that in almost every single zombie movie out there, some schmuck gets bitten and then hides it so that they can get into the safe zone, only to succumb to the infection and then wreak havoc on the people inside.

And the reason that there’s nary a zombie/infected film/property that doesn’t have that dimension to it is that we already know that it’s a common state of the western attitude. The failure of the average individualistic westerner to consider anything but their own interests has led to so much more than just the mismanagement of the pandemic. In fact, I would dare say that nearly all societal ills stem from this one fundamental shared personality flaw. No, I’m not being hyperbolic, and, yes, I will take questions later.

But, here’s the thing about zombie stories: they always show the schmuck that gets bitten and the very bad result so that we can see that hiding infection makes bad things happen, and we can learn not to do them. Like, that’s 90% of the purpose of artistic media, to shine a light on the foibles and flaws (and beauty and joy) of the human condition to demonstrate that we can materially do better.

Okay, But Why. And What.

Even just glancing through the overwhelming range of disasters and destruction every day is enough to exhaust anyone’s daily What The Fuck allotment. Maybe the pandemic feels like such old news that no one takes it seriously anymore because, by comparison, there’s a lot more tragedy going on in the world, starting at our front door. I can’t fathom a guess as to what creates the circumstances of just ignoring your symptoms and exposing people you care about to a potentially debilitating or even deadly disease.

But fucking seriously, wear a goddamned mask. Wash your fucking hands. Stay the fuck home.

COVID happened, but that’s just one of many potential pathogenic threats. Avian flu is spreading like mad, and it’s mutating rapidly, and I promise that there are other menaces lurking in the wings.

There is no “going back to normal” because normal doesn’t exist anymore. We started fucking that one up about a hundred years ago, and the Great Fuckening continues to this day. Denial is definitely one of the key stages of grief, but fucking hell, we’re past the point where that’s a healthy response.

The fact is, getting sick with COVID or the flu might not be a zombie bite for you, but it might be for someone else that you are around. Stop acting like you’re the hero who will magically overcome the odds, stop trying to “bull through the discomfort”, and start acting like a member of a community.

Because gods help you if we do have a zombie apocalypse. If I find out that you went out in public without a mask while sick with COVID, I’m not letting you into my fort.

Thanks to MariaD42530 from Pixabay for the header image.