Keeping a Level Head

It must've been the hundredth coronavirus headline I read when I started screaming at the top of my lungs in bloody terror less than an inch from the faces of everyone around me. When I ran out of breath I inhaled as much air as my chest could take in and resumed shrieking. A little girl approached me. "It'll be okay," she said. I slapped her face so hard I almost broke my wrist. "Don't you get it?!" I yelled as she sobbed, clutching her face. "We're dead! You, me-- everyone!"

I shouldered my front door open and sprinted to the nearest supermarket to buy all the toilet paper they had, shouting "We're dead!" over and over along the way. I passed aisle after aisle full of food and was stunned to find the shelves of toilet paper were empty. An assistant at the store told me they were sold out. I grabbed him by the neck and shook him back and forth as I berated him. "Where's your disinfectant?" I shouted. The assistant pointed nervously. I dashed towards their disinfectant stock and bought as many cans as I could carry.

I ran out of the store and started giving dirty looks to every Asian I sighted on the street and proceeded to spray them with the disinfectant from toes to eyeballs, shout slurs at them and explain at a loud volume that the outbreak was their fault and they should go back to their own virus-ridden region of the world. My proximity to so many Asians started making me think I was infected. I panicked. I needed a vaccine, and quick.

I rushed to the nearest hospital in a coughing fit, sputtering on everyone in the waiting room. "I'm sick!" I shrieked repeatedly. I stumbled into the maternity ward in a mad search for their vaccine storage, coughing on every newborn baby along the way. No vaccine. If the virus originated in China I figured that'd be my best bet to find one. I immediately took out my phone and booked a connecting flight across the world that stopped in every continent at least once.

I coughed hoarsely on everyone in sight at every transportation hub on my connecting flight between here and China until I was finally abducted by aliens. I coughed on them and they died, but I found a vaccine on their spaceship. Just goes to show that things will work out if you keep a level head.