Lions and Tigers and Retrovirii, Oh My!

First off, all hail Latin, the ancient world’s (or, at least, ancient Europe’s,) lingua franca… Virus is a most interesting word. Its’ original meaning comes out to something like poison when rendered properly (thank you, Wikipedia). Virus is uncountable, a so-called ‘mass noun,’ for which there is no evidence of an historical plural. It is neutral, of the second declension, and there’s a great deal of contention over whether an ending could have been used for it at all in its given form. Due, however, to our cultural adherence to classical education’s obsession with the Mother Tongue, we insist on tarting up something that should just be given an English ending with something that LOOKS Latin, then telling people who use the English that they’re ignorant. In fact, doctors DO refer to ‘viruses,’ and the term ‘virii’ is to be found almost exclusively online, used by half-fact-touting retards who want to feel cooler than others.

Today, a community health nurse came in to work, and injected all comers with flu vaccine, fortunately with separate and distinct syringes, as I’ve been hit on online by at least one coworker. He looks rather sickly most of the time, was in the same injection group as I, and kept staring at my package lasciviously. I was uncomfortable. This doubly so after filling out the form divesting my workplace and community health from any liability in the event, say, of my untimely death due to contaminated goo used to grow the viral soup; mercury poisoning deriving from the preservative used to fix said goo, or, really, anything else having to do with injections on this particular day, blue moons, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera… (Note in daily life the over-use of tarted-up Latin by members of the legal community. It’ll make you feel better, I promise.) In any case, this got me nervous, so it was off to the home of the Neuveau-hypochondriac, the World-Wide-Weberverse!!!

In my playful, procrastinatory online romp, I came across a very helpful listing of possible side-effects by the CDC, which greatly reduced the weight of my fear. However, in the tradition of an information-starved addict, a second opinion was sought, this time from a far less encouraging albeit far rantier website. This source linked certain vaccines with pooled homosexual serums used for the then-experimental vaccine against hepatitis in the late ‘70’s and thus AIDS. The general thrust of this article was that viruses similar to aids were to be found in many of the cultures upon which vaccines are based, or in which they are nurtured. In terms of the hepatitis booster, infection of the anti-hep soup by HIV was specifically mentioned. Furthermore, CONSTANT VIGILANCE is obviously needed to make sure biological warfare isn’t used to infect us all with H to the IV!!! Man, were the mental 'virii' flying! To my great chagrin, the whole deal turned out to be somewhat true. Apparently, calf fetal goo is used to culture some vaccines, and an HIV-like virus is sometimes found therein. Some of the leading theories regarding the original source of AIDS involve use of secretions from animals in which, due to the nature of vaccines, full sterilization is impossible. So, if a particular body had ‘caught a ride”… Well, you get the picture. (http://heartspring.net/flu_shot_side_effects.html, www.cdc.gov)

Anyway, the long (I don’t kid myself… This isn’t short,) of it is this. Due to the jitters and generic vaccination reactions, I’m feeling like somebody pooped in my cornflakes. Obviously, all the dreck online is true, so I’m going to test positive for AIDS in six months and die, all because I wanted to prevent an annual, puke-flavored bout with influenza. I have the very worst of pretentious virii stuck in my head, while dead viruses float around my bloodstream, hopefully doing something marginally more useful. The point, friends, is this… God damn the internets.