By Mad Dug Duchamp – A special to Woke Up!

The night Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards, I felt sick to my stomach. I was not sick from hearing a man make a disgusting joke about Alopecia — the female version of male-pattern baldness. Nor was it because Mr. Smith’s open palm felt like 400 years of oppression exploding and in its aftermath laying bare my white privilege. It was because I had COVID-19. According to Public Health a sore stomach is just one of among 109 other minor ailments that are a symptom of the mild, but deadly virus.

Friends, I was terrified! I immediately took a rapid test and low and behold it confirmed what I already suspected. I was sick with COVID-19!

How could this be? I was triple vaxxed and had followed all the government mandates, laws and strong suggestions, but the truth is this is a sneaky, sneaky virus.

It’s been more than two years since the lethal COVID-19 virus broke loose from a wet market in Wuhan, China. Since then our collective lives have been on hold: travel, visits with family and friends, even work had taken a backseat. I, like you, have been following the science from Day 1. Whether that science was from a computer programmer like Bill Gates or a former Drama Teacher like Justin Trudeau, I learned that “we were in this together.”

I moved out of my three bedroom condo in downtown Toronto and built myself a small shack outside of Timmins. I didn’t see a human for more than two years, and when I did leave my shack to explore the wilderness I wore an N95 mask. I was a modern day Thoreau living in the wilderness, only using the Internet to order organic groceries and fair trade coffee. Or watch the latest release on Netflix. And, of course, to attend Zoom meetings. (Zoom bombings are so 2020!)

There’s no scientific explanation as to how I got COVID-19. My best guess is that I didn’t wash some of my groceries thoroughly enough. But that night as I watched Black acting legend Will Smith give a tearful acceptance speech for his overdue Oscar, I decided to update my will, write to friends and family to say goodbye, and accept that I would be another soul taken too soon by the deadly COVID-19 virus. Unsure what to do next, I took a few vitamins, mixed a boiling pot of tea and went to bed, expecting to never wake up again. “Thank you world,” I said. “Love will make you do crazy things,” I thought.

But the next morning I woke up! I even felt better. All I could think was: “Whhaaaaaa?” For the next three days, I began to feel better and better. It was only then that I realized that COVID-19 was nothing more than a common cold. How could this have happened? How could I have spent so many years afraid of something that had been a regular part of my life and your life forever. A few sniffles, a minor cough, and some achy limbs. Was this as good as COVID gets?

Folks, we’ve been duped!!! I posted this on Twitter and Facebook but was immediately banned from all the ‘socials’. I wrote to my local newspapers but was ignored. I even called into talk radio shows … but no one would listen. All the distancing and lockdowns and masks and vaccines to stop a cold? How could I have been so stupid!

Well, I packed up my shack in Timmins and moved back to my apartment in Toronto. Today, I’m writing this from the food court in the Scarborough Town Centre where I’m unmasked and feel free from the iron constraints of the COVID mandates. Folks, it’s time to stop listening to the social media doctors and start listening to the survivors. If I can survive COVID-19, so can you. It’s time to make like the Fresh Prince and slap COVID out of our lives.