by Jan D. Swart
I don’t know anyone who has the flu anymore. That doesn’t seem to exist since corona. Could it have been official comedy all those years?
Funny actually, because last year almost everyone in my family was very ill. My wife had 39.2, which is an attractive reason to snuggle up close to her in November. The next morning I was still healthy for a while. Even a snot nose could not come off.
The children and grandchildren also had the flu, so I decided to take them in. It made nursing easier for the only one who was still walking. And so in November 2019, all rooms were ajar for two weeks. In between was the corridor. The only ones walking there were the dog and me. The rest were moaning and ordering.
I had my market stall in the hall. I traded in fruit, aniseed milk and rusks. I also distributed tissues, wet washcloths and a few nice comic magazines for my son-in-law. I had not yet left one room or a new order came from the other. It was a relay race that never ended.
After four days they started texting each other and it was obviously assumed that I had an adequate solution for dead batteries. The bravest photographed me and the bravest added my service to Facebook and respected me to the outside world with a cosmic thumb of a yellow color.
In the meantime I was throttled. Because if everyone is in front of pampus, I want to belong. Flu must be able to share togetherness. Flu is fun. You must be able to exchange shared suffering from all rooms. In the military barracks in Ossendrecht you used to eat the crumbs from each other’s navels, so to speak. That was solidarity.
In a good flu epidemic it must also be one big plague gang. The bedside tables should be overflowing with pills and powders. The ground should be littered with Libelles and Stories for everyone. Flu is lightheartedness. The pot must also be next to the bed. Decorative if necessary, so that you can make the vomiting sound for appearances when you see that Azarkan from Denk on television.
Preferably also a basket for the dirty tissues next to all beds. That’s the flu. Waking up bathed in sweat with a dollop of yogurt on the bottom sheet next to you, almost hard. That way you turn an ominous lack of vitamins into something worthwhile for the illness.
A week of flu a year is a relief. Flu is the snack among diseases. It’s a velvety slump. Especially for scientists and civil servants, who have basically never worked. And yet everyone is entitled to it. Unfortunately, I can’t remember when it happened to me. The flu always passed my door, one door further. But I knew why. I was always the only one at home who stubbornly flared off his call for the flu shot.
Only heard this week for the first time that the injection is indeed only 50% safe. Always thought.
And yet I took it this fall just in case. Out of fear. I thought: if he is not good for the flu, then maybe for his dangerous brother from China. And now just wait and see. But in the meantime it remains strange and inexplicable that I know many people who are infected with the Wuhan virus, but not one anymore with an old-fashioned Dutch cozy flu. Gommers should come and explain that again.
He does. That sweetheart loves that, TV.
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