Kris: “A million euros a month? Is that all?”
Murphy: “You do realize, Kris, that a euro is worth a buck 10 right now?”
Kris: “Big deal. I don’t see Lebron James settling for that. Or Tom Brady. To name two.”
Murphy: “And I’m afraid we’re not getting anything like a cure for this coronavirus pandemic from any of them.”
Kris: “Brady?!?” I’d be more afraid that he would offer a cure. And then we’d find out just how much he cheated to come up with it! We’d find out, too late, that his secret sauces work only for him.”
Murphy: “Because the truly secret ingredients were somehow left out?”
Kris: “What are you impugning, sir? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Or should I say, needle needle? You’d think that a civilized society would make the appropriate investments to prepare itself for things like virus pandemics. Like paying Ph.D. researchers enough so they don’t have to live out of their cars.”
Murphy: “Uh huh. And how many billions of dollars, in gate receipts and advertising revenues, do your white-coated minions bring in, huh? Why do you think our university keeps its football program, and promotes it to the hilt? So it can pay for the fraction of the concussion research program that it can’t extort out of the Federal government! Dollars are bigger than sense, have been forever, and you know this as well as I do. You know the real reason we’re all on lockdown right now?”
Kris: “So we can nip this COVID-19 in the bud?”
Murphy: “You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid too? It’s because our so-called medical ‘system’ has been so gutted by profiteering and [gah!] ‘efficiency’ that it doesn’t have enough excess capacity to handle a little outbreak, never mind a big one! So instead of letting this COVID-19 burn itself out, we ‘flatten the curve’ so society doesn’t collapse right this minute, at the risk of keeping this virus on a slow boil forever, ready to bite our butts the minute we dare to peep out of our holes! And what if the next one is a plague that’s actually worthy of the name? The whitecoats have been warning us about this kind of scenario for a very long time. They’ve been pooh-poohed. Not entertaining, Johnny. And technology has been very nicely, and very profitably, buying us time against the crop failures, and water supply failures, and pestilences. Well, heads up, time might just be running out. And in the meantime, the entertainment we’ve been buying at the cost of humanity’s future has been snuffed out. I hope Mr Brady enjoys his retirement.”
Kris: “He’ll have the money, and the secret sauces, to do so. At least temporarily. Meanwhile, drink up. Faculty club closes after tonight. They say it’ll reopen after the virus threat has passed, but I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s not like the digital talking heads they’ll be replacing us with need a watering hole.”
Murphy: “Are you quite sure that the university will bother with that much? Or be allowed to?”
Kris: “Murphy?”
Murphy: “Yes, Kris?”
Kris: “Shut up. Just shut up!”
There will be viruses forever. It’s the little things that getcha.