- Jan 23, 2022
- 17 min read

CHOOSE YOUR OWN REALITY

[A SOCIALLY DISTANCED PANDEMIC PUB QUIZ]

1) COVID-19 will:

A) Soon be forgotten

B) Decide to disregard natural and anthropogenic selective pressures and become her own woman

C) Just go away, like that bladder infection you had last year

D) Continue to confound public health systems unwilling to get ahead of the virus

E) None of the above

2) If someone said to you “In the aftermath of this pandemic we should totally establish regional centres mandated to control disease and maybe a global organization focused on health as well” your response would be:

A) “Yo, we already have that!”

B) “You’re dreaming, bro”

C) “Though a very good idea in theory, in practice it would be prohibitively costly and difficult to implement”

D) “What? Why?”

3) The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918:

A) Was so much worse

B) Was no worse than any other damn thing

C) Actually started in America and was basically -something something- America -something something- racism -something something- Big Pharma -something something- Donald Trump!

D) Happened prior to the widespread acceptance of the germ theory of disease; when common therapies were oils, perfumes, herbs, and spices; and decades before basic airway management or respiratory help was available. The pandemic began in March of 1918 with a case in Kansas; 75,000 flu-related deaths were reported in the first six months of 1918; New York City didn’t have its first death until September; and by the end of 1918 the medical community still had no idea what caused the illness. For comparison, also beginning in March, our pandemic began in Hubei, China; we knew the cause of the illness in December of the previous year; the first fatality in New York was in March; and by the end of June 2020 it had killed 128,000 Americans

E) None of the above

4) In a laboratory studying SARS 2003, it took fewer than 20 generations to:

A) Transmute into HCoV-OC43 (one of the viruses responsible for the common cold)

B) Die of ennui

C) Develop rocket technology and plant a SARS flag on the moon

D) Evolve 100% lethality, killing all the mice in the study

5) In the wild, SARS 2003:

A) Does not evolve (evolution is a comforting fiction invented by disagreeable atheists)

B) Increases its pathogenicity

C) Is more like a mild flu

D) There is no wild SARS, it was engineered in a lab in Vietnam by former Nazi scientists

6) In wild mammals, COVID-19:

A) Never transmits between populations or species

B) Experiences no natural selection stress (because it practices yoga and meditation)

C) Evolves to be a rather timid, largely asymptomatic illness

D) Evolves to have increased pathogenicity

7) In the lab, COVID-19:

A) Mostly scrolls TikTok while watching Netflix and eating alternating spoonfuls of Nutella and peanut butter

B) Evolves to beat antibodies

C) Has shown that it cannot evolve (much like our school system)

D) Continually loses out to antibodies, like a dope

8) In the lab, COVID-19 spike protein:

A) Evolves very much unlike it does in the wild

B) Evolves in a manner closely mimicking its in vivo behaviour

C) Doesn't evolve

D) Spends in inordinate amount of its time writing CIHR grant proposals

9) With COVID-19, reinfection by a more virulent variant:

A) Results in milder infections

B) Is impossible

C) Only ever causes worse illness

D) Has resulted in both better and worse outcomes

10) The most genetically similar coronavirus to the one currently plaguing us is RaTG13. This coronavirus is:

A) As different from our pandemic virus as you are from an orangutan

B) Nearly identical to SARS-CoV-2

C) Like, literally the same, bro

D) My new stage name: “Rat-G13”

11) In February of 2020, The Lancet published a letter signed by a team of leading public health experts that "strongly condemned" any suggestion that COVID could possibly have escaped from a lab as an outlandish and irresponsible "conspiracy"

A) The signatories still stand by their assessment

B) Those who composed this letter all mysteriously wound up dead and with strange cephalopod-like suction cup markings across their heads and torsos

C) Signatories have since recanted, published a new statement admitting their error and calling for an open and transparent public debate

D) The letter was later edited with the words "like literally” added in three separate places

12) Given the release of the EcoHealth documents, we now know:

A) By early 2018, folks had developed a model for finding and inserting exotic cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses

B) By 2019, chimeric human pathogen MERS-CoV research was taking place

C) There were loads of folks connected to this work and all perfectly aware of all of the above – every one of whom chose to remain silent when the pandemic hit and debate over origins began

D) All of the above

13) On Friday March 30, 1979 there was an anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, USSR. Local officials and scientists explained to the citizenry and the wider world that infections were zoonotic in origin. International experts were eventually invited to investigate and reported the outbreak resulted from a contaminated meat processing plant. It wasn't until 1992 that Boris Yeltsin admitted the real cause was:

A) Capitalism

B) Teenagers

C) Rock and Roll

D) A virology lab leak

14) The probability that COVID-19 was sourced in the wild and manipulated in the lab is:

A) Similar to that of a secretive cabal of lizard people manipulating world events

B) Less than one in 2,500,000,000,000

C) What is the proba-ba-llitity?

D) I’m not sure but what I do know is that we have research proposals describing this very work and being done at the very lab in question. So, if I were to guess I’d say the probability is in a similar realm to this box of Purdy’s chocolates having come from the Purdy’s chocolate factory

15) Researchers at Yale Medical School and the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke recently summed up the findings of 15 studies in the journal Science. They found that:

A) “Basically, COVID-19 ain’t no thang”

B) SARS-CoV-2 not only induces respiratory symptoms but can have serious impacts on multiple organ systems, including the kidneys, gastrointestinal tract, heart, and brain. And that even young people with mild initial disease can develop acute COVID-19 and Long Covid clinical neurological and psychiatric syndromes. These serious complications include everything from confusion to depression to psychosis, neuromuscular disorders to strokes

C) “What we have here is a Canadian bio-weapon disguised as an American bio-weapon, made to look like an Israeli bio-weapon pretending to be a Chinese bioweapon”

D) Fried with a little butter and garlic, organs impacted by COVID-19 taste like chicken

16) According to Wenzel et al., in Nature Neuroscience, COVID-19:

A) May promote endothelial cell death within the brain, which could explain some of the neurological issues

B) Will make you better at algebra and geometry

C) Is benign with regard to the brain

D) Can gift you with the supernatural ability to crush objects with your mind

17) The city of Utrecht in the Netherlands hosted an outdoor music festival in the summer of 2021. This was a “COVID-free” “test-for-entry” event, requiring all attendees to demonstrate they were vaccinated, acquired protection from prior infection, or had a recent negative COVID test. 20,000 festival-goers came out over two days

A) The festival was a huge success and demonstrated how easily we can put this pandemic behind us if we just follow some simple public health measures

B) 1,050 COVID infections were directly linked to this event, making it the largest superspreader event in the Dutch pandemic, while active cases jumped from 8,541 the previous week to 51,957 – causing the mayor of Utrecht and the Dutch Prime Minister to issue formal apologies for their negligence

C) None of this happened. You’re lying

D) It’s just the flu, goddamnit!

18) Queensland, Australia largely avoided the pandemic for the better part of two years, with only 2,000 total cases and 7 deaths. This was done largely by implementing strong border restrictions along with strict quarantine and contact tracing measures. They decided to remove restrictions once 80% of the population was fully vaccinated. Doing so resulted in:

A) The invasion and attempted conquest of the region by Fijian and Samoan lawn bowling teams

B) More than 300,000 cases and a hundred deaths in under a month

C) As anticipated, only a slight increase in cases and a return to pre-pandemic normalcy

D) Everyone dropping dead from VITT

19) Breakthrough infections with COVID-19 are:

A) Exceedingly rare, but they can happen

B) Not that rare but when they happen folks don't transmit the virus in nearly the same volume

C) Very common and those cases tend to shed a ton of virus

D) Wait, what's a breakthrough infection?

20) Research funded by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research and Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre looked at 10,024 breakthrough infections. They found:

A) Associations between vaccination and COVID outcomes were marked in those over 60 years old while no robust associations were observed in younger people. As well, though vaccination appears to significantly lower risk of ICU admission and respiratory failure it shows no impact on renal disease or long-COVID outcomes

B) 96.71% of virions observed had one of those emergency window-breaking keychains in their recent Amazon purchase history

C) That none of the 5 million folks who died of COVID so far are ever polled about whether they think mitigation measures were too severe or relaxed

D) Where all the missing socks have gone

21) "Real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) cycle threshold (Ct) values in specimens from vaccinated persons with breakthrough cases were similar to those of persons who…"

A) “...were unvaccinated, not fully vaccinated, or whose vaccination status was unknown"

B) “...denied the existence of the sasquatch”

C) “...injected pool cleaner directly into their spleens”

D) “...who had died in the first wave of the pandemic”

22) Investigating people who recovered from COVID infection, Liu and team explained that 36% of their cohort were serologic nonresponders. To explore potential reasons for the lack of seroconversion, they looked at demographic, clinical, and laboratory data and compared race/ethnicity, sex, and symptom severity but failed to find any significant associations. This suggests:

A) Significant numbers of folks who present with clinical illness (considered to have “prior infection”, well over 200 million to date, and thus considered to have the same status as those “fully vaccinated”) may be effectively “unvaccinated.” Oh, and we don’t know why

B) Nothing, nothing at all

C) That, despite testing multiple samples of nasopharyngeal fluid for IgA, IgM, and IgG against a host of antigens, as well as neutralizing antibodies, while implementing multicenter reverse transcription utilization of Alabama serosurvey logistic regression modelling protocols, investigations yielded cycle threshold values inversely correlated with viral loads, unlike cohorts from seroprevalence studies of false-positive non-quartile seroconverters with heightened anamnestic and antibody responses– What was the question?

D) 47

23) When Donald Trump announced a vaccine would be ready in a matter of months

A) The world rejoiced. Fireworks went off simultaneously in cities around the globe in a spontaneous celebration of human capacity and the power of modern science

B) 99.37% of virologists, epidemiologists, pharmaceutical insiders, public health experts, current and former surgeons general, plastic surgeons, general practitioners, hospital employees, news pundits, dishwashers, music teachers, Facebook commentators, and kids playing Minecraft all screamed in one booming voice (temporarily disrupting the Earth’s ionosphere and knocking two Chinese military satellites out of orbit) “There’s no FUCKING chance, you FUCKING idiot!!!”

C) What he didn’t know was that it would be a Trump-branded suppository administered and activated by an ultraviolet-emitting wand (covered in sparkles and resembling a unicorn’s horn)

D) Nobody even noticed

24) On the prospect for a COVID-19 vaccine arriving before 2022

A) Dr. Carlos Del Rio (Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Emory University’s Vaccine Center in Atlanta) explained to NPR, in May of 2020, that "Well, I'd say there's some skepticism just because getting a vaccine at all is pretty optimistic”

B) Laurie Garrett (expert and award winning author reporting on emerging diseases, pandemics, and bioterrorism) argued on CNN, MSNBC, and Democracy Now! that 36 months was the most ambitious timeline anyone had reason to place on a vaccine, one that may never arrive

C) Dr. David Kelvin (Canada Research Chair specializing in emerging diseases and professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Dalhousie University) told CBC that Canada should be “preparing for a scenario in which there is no vaccine in the short or even in the medium term,” noting that in the seventeen years since SARS no effective vaccine has emerged

D) [Oh yeah, just more facts. No question here. The answer is: “I recall. ‘No vaccine likely, ever.’ This was the unanimous opinion from effectively every expert in every relevant field including those working on vaccines”]

25) In March of 2020 the WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group published their global strategy for accelerating vaccine development, the “Coordinated Global Research Roadmap.” The plan set out how we could reduce the typical 10-20 year timeline of vaccine production to 2 years (performing the closest thing we’ve ever seen to a miracle) by:

A) Skipping clinical trial preparation and entire trial phases as well as starting phases in parallel, before previous stages were complete, rather than waiting for results

B) Going all-in on the likelihood of a successful mRNA vaccine (despite never before being approved for use in humans) and immediately starting construction of new manufacturing and distribution infrastructure

C) Fast-tracking all government regulatory approvals at all stages

D) All of the above

E) Transferring all our collective wealth to Bill Gates

26) China’s first experimental COVID-19 vaccine (Ad5-nCoV), a single-dose shot stored at normal refrigerator temperatures

A) Was first tested on humans in March of 2020, the same time the pandemic was declared

B) Was authorized for Phase I/II clinical trial on Canadians in May of 2020

C) Showed 90.98% efficacy at preventing severe infection

D) All of the above

E) None of the above

27) How many COVID vaccines have been approved?

A) Nobody knows

B) There’s Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca. Oh and that other one, uhm—oh yeah, Johnson & Johnson

C) There are a ton. Some of them are: Abdala, Ad26.COV2.S, BBIBP-CorV, CanSino, Convidicea, CoronaVac [formerly PiCoVacc], Covaxin [aka BBV152], COVIran Barekat, CoviVac, Covovax, Cov-Pars Razi, EpiVacCorona, Fakharavac, Gamaleya, Janssen, Medigen-Dynavax, MVC, QazVac, ShenzhenKangtai, Sinopharm-Wuhan, Soberana 2, Soberana Plus, Spikogen, Sputnik Light, WIBP, ZF2001, ZyCoV-D, etc etc...

D) None are approved

E) Just like there is no virus there are no vaccines; instead, these are global mass-microchipping campaigns using technology co-developed by Google and Facebook and entirely funded by taxpayers

28) Someone with a PhD in neurobiology and who works as a senior engineer at a multinational pharmaceutical company said: “When someone tells me they don’t trust COVID vaccines [because] they’re ‘rushed’, I use this analogy: If I order a dress and choose Next Day Delivery instead of Standard Delivery, the dress hasn’t suddenly diminished in quality. The process for it to get to me is what’s streamlined.”

A) What a great analogy! I’m totally using that

B) This is how stupid people with PhDs can be, even on a pressing topic within their own profession

C) I should get a PhD in neurobiology when I retire from being a [writer/poet/painter/photographer]

29) Canada paid $8.18 per dose of AstraZeneca while the US paid $4 and EU member states just $3

A) This is a sad fact

B) Oh god, why?!

C) Canada has more money than brains

D) All of the above

30) Regarding AstraZeneca, Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommended:

A) Immediately suspending its use in people under age 55

B) Against giving the vaccine to anyone aged 65 and older

C) Its use in all Canadians over age 30

D) All of the above and in the same 30-day period

31) All around the same time, on the risk of developing a blood clot from an AstraZeneca dose:

A) Dr. Lisa Barrett, infectious disease researcher and clinician at Dalhousie University, told CBC it was “very rare, and I mean very rare, maybe one in a million people”

B) University of Ottawa lawyer and health policy expert Amir Attaran was cited in the National Post saying “There actually is no serious debate about the AZ vaccine any longer,” “there is a risk of blood clots, and the only ‘debate’ is whether that risk is extremely low (one in a million) or merely very low (one in a few hundred thousand)”

C) Dr. Joss Reimer, the medical lead for Manitoba's vaccine task force, reported that “The likelihood of the potential adverse side effects is somewhere in the range of one in 100,000 to one in a million, according to current data.”

D) Dr. Caroline Quach-Thanh, co-chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, “If, for instance, my sister was to get the AstraZeneca vaccine and die of a thrombosis (blood clot) when I know that it could have been prevented and that she’s not in a high-risk area, I’m not sure I could live with it”

E) [Oh, right, this wasn’t a question, just some facts. The correct answer is: ‘F) All of the above’]

F) All of the above

32) In Canada, according to the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (who stopped counting in May of 2021), the risk of having an AstraZeneca-induced event is closer to:

A) 1:225,000

B) 1:1,000,000

C) 1:12,300,000

D) 1:55,000 (Norway 1:26,500; Netherlands 1:50,000, Denmark 1:74,400, UK 1:93,400)

33) Here in Canada, national news reports put the official number of AstraZeneca-related blood clot cases and deaths at:

A) “2,381 cases and 62 deaths”

B) “6 cases (9 more suspected) and 4 deaths (with 3 more under investigation)”

C) Either 18, 28, or 40 cases confirmed nationally, or 13 in Ontario; with 5 deaths or maybe 12, depending where you look. (This while the federal government’s vaccine safety database clearly shows 157 cases of blood clots alone associated with AZ and hundreds of vaccine-related deaths. But who really knows how all this pans out in reality? The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table said of our official incidence reporting that it remains “unreliable and not peer-reviewed.” This is why you don’t change established protocols in a panic during an emergency)

D) None of the above

34) You learn that a healthy 40-year-old dies from vaccine-induced illness. Your response is:

A) “Someone at low risk for infection, and unlikely to suffer severe outcomes if they became infected, being taken out by a socially mandated vaccine arriving a year after we learned how to prevent spread of the virus is, well, just too bad”

B) “That never happened. Not one time”

C) “Serves him right. Vaccine producers are evil and he should have known that. We tried to warn him”

D) “This is totally fucking appalling and shows both an inability to assess medical risk (by the very medical professionals given this task) paired with the perfect moral failure of those requiring and delivering the vaccine gifting themselves legal and financial immunity to any and all consequences. It's the Tainted Blood Scandal all over again. It’s as amazing as it is predictable”

35) According to Pfizer.com, in a section titled “About Our Landmark Trial”, their Phase 3 clinical trial for their COVID vaccine:

A) “...[B]egan July 27, 2020, and completed enrollment of 46,331 participants in January 2021”

B) “Was successfully completed before mass vaccination began in December of 2020”

C) “Was unsuccessful. Strangely, just as with our trials with lab mice, human participants’ hair fell out and their skin turned orange”

D) “...[I]s scheduled for completion in Spring 2024”

36) The same day public health officials began administering doses of the Pfizer vaccine, the BC Premier was quoted as saying:

A) “After just two shots you will have immunity to this dreadful virus”

B) “This pandemic is clearly a Russian hoax”

C) “We anticipate you’ll need two shots this year, and a booster every four to six months for the rest of your life if you want to maintain neutralizing immunity,” adding, “COVID-19 is the common cold, only a little worse”

D) “We don’t anticipate that the COVID pandemic will be with us come the Summer of 2021,” adding, “It’s part confidence and part optimism … based on briefings from officials who spent their lifetime working on these issues”

37) Despite, at the time, those under age 19 having more cases than everyone over age 50 combined:

A) No serious illness, hospitalizations, or deaths were reported among this age group

B) They only watched a quarter of the episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee that older groups did. Perhaps that was predictable

C) They were more than ten times as likely to wear a mask

D) The BCCDC and provincial health officials maintained their stance that kids are “low risk,” “don't transmit the virus,” and have a “lower case rate” than the rest of the population. They then sent kids back to school – an event that ended our downward case trend and has yet to be corrected

38) The voice of the BC pandemic response, Dr. Henry, said on October 1, 2021 "We know that influenza, unlike COVID, can cause very serious illness more commonly in children." She said this while knowing that:

A) Since 2017 the number of influenza-associated pediatric deaths in the US were 532 while in the twenty months since the start of the pandemic they have seen 561 COVID-19 pediatric deaths

B) A study published in The Lancet, of 135,000 patients in France, showed kids younger than 5 years needed intensive care support more than twice as often for COVID-19 than for influenza; and in adolescents (11–17 years) the in-hospital mortality was ten-times higher for COVID-19 than for influenza

C) Both A and B

D) No studies have been done to date

E) None of the above

39) An investigation into hundreds of COVID infections and dozens of deaths within Vancouver regional hospitals found:

A) “Strict adherence to basic health and safety protocols, just as you would expect of these professionals”

B) “Masks, too many people wearing masks!”

C) Along with a lack of paperwork documenting viral transmission and mitigation efforts, "staff who didn’t distance or wear masks ... issues with clutter and hygiene, questionable adherence to PPE rules and staff who were working while infectious”

D) “Cupboards full of colourful dildos and vibrators”

40) Ivermectin:

A) Won it's discoverers, Campbell and Ōmura, the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for saving hundreds of millions of people from horrific disabling illness and sits on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines

B) Has been engineered into a covert 5G-transmitting weapon used by SIGINT operatives

C) Is derived from compounds found in soil samples on the surface of Mars

D) Is a parish in Buckinghamshire, England

41) In their June 2020 study, Ivermectin: a systematic review from antiviral effects to COVID-19 complementary regimen, published in the Journal of Antibiotics, Heidary and Gharebaghi looked at 50 years worth of studies suggesting Ivermectin:

A) “Is just goddamned horse paste!!!”

B) “Only impacts worms commonly found parasitizing the bowels of pigs, sheep, and horses”

C) “Should only be prescribed by veterinarians and only for use in farm animals”

D) “Is highly effective against many microorganisms including some viruses. … Several studies reported antiviral effects of Ivermectin on RNA viruses such as Zika, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, Hendra, Newcastle, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, chikungunya, Semliki Forest, Sindbis, Avian influenza A, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, Human immunodeficiency virus type 1, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Furthermore, there are some studies showing antiviral effects of Ivermectin against DNA viruses such as Equine herpes type 1, BK polyomavirus, pseudorabies, porcine circovirus 2, and bovine herpesvirus 1”

42) In April of 2020, the Royal Society of Canada established a task force on COVID-19. In June of 2021 the Royal Society published a report titled "Excess all-cause mortality during the COVID-19 epidemic in Canada". The report found:

A) "Canada has conducted 75% fewer tests per positive case to date than peer countries and may have failed to detect about three quarters of COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the epidemic"

B) "Slow, uncoordinated, non-transparent death and LTC [long-term care] death reporting systems inadequate for mass mortality monitoring during a crisis"

C) "The Atlantic provinces, Alberta, and British Columbia reported at least four times fewer probable COVID-19 deaths unaccompanied by laboratory tests than the Canadian average."

D) All of the above

E) None of the above

43) From February 1 to November 15, 2020, British Columbia reported 293 COVID deaths. The Royal Society of Canada's investigation of excess mortality for that time period suggests the number was more likely between:

A) 132 and 154

B) 520 and 680

C) 800 and 900

D) 2,098 and 2,865

44) At the end of 2021 official COVID-19 cases hit 290 million with 5.4 million deaths. For scale:

A) Here’s a banana

B) In a typical year measles strikes ~20 million people and causes ~150k deaths; ~200 million are hit with malaria, causing ~400k deaths; and ~6 million get and ~500k are killed by influenza

C) You can’t scare me with your stupid NUMBERS!

D) The planets:seconds ratio is the only relationship I care about

E) What is a "COVID-19 case"?

45) UK HSA Variant Technical Briefing (#33) "Updated Omicron Risk Assessment" states that:

A) mRNA boosters begin to wane between weeks 5 and 9, and are as low as 30% effective by week 10

B) Boosters are so effective against known variants that it's just bloody unbelievable

C) A booster basically makes you invincible to all current and future coronaviruses

D) None of the above

46) With regard to the power of mRNA vaccines, we were told:

A) In Spring 2020: "...and the brilliant thing is that we can update any mRNA vaccine in just a matter of days!"

B) In Spring 2021: "We don't need a Delta-specific shot because we don't know if the variant will leave, never mind become big, outside of India"

C) In Summer 2021: "Delta is here. Everywhere, in fact. It's really too late for a change to the vaccine. Maybe if we had seen this coming"

D) In Fall 2021: "It's pointless to roll out a Delta vax because we can't know if a new non-Delta variant might emerge and replace it as the globally dominant strain"

E) At New Year 2022: "Though the Omicron is now responsible for more than 90% of all cases an updated vaccine will arrive too late to help"

F) Oh right, all of the above

47) New research from Kannan et al. and published in the Journal of Autoimmunity indicates that mutations found in the Omicron variant have:

A) Rendered antibodies ineffective, and thus vaccination, which likely accounts for the high number of re-infections and breakthrough cases we're seeing

B) Rendered the virus harmless

C) Given the virus the ability to travel back in time

D) Resulted in genes that will be useful if transferred into the cotton plant

48) Most confirmed COVID deaths:

A) Happened in the first six months of 2020

B) Were actually caused not by COVID but other respiratory-related issues, preexisting conditions, or old age

C) To date have happened recently, since April of 2021

D) Per capita, have been in Eastern Europe, South America, and the United States

E) Have yet to happen

F) A and B

G) C, D, and E

H) None of the above