OTTAWA — The Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed today that the country is now in the 6th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic signaled by the all too familiar pattern of climbing case numbers. While Wave 6 still has yet to fully unfold, many critics are already unimpressed, deriding the virus’s latest offering as ‘stale and derivative’.
“Relaxed safety guidelines result in an uptick in cases, then hospitalizations followed by another lockdown. Then cases drop, hooray, so we can finally relax these safety guidelines”, said PHAC official Dr. Melanie Gaspar, stifling a yawn. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one five times before.”
“Look when COVID first appeared, it was a hit, totally viral”, said publicist Vicki Valerio. “You couldn’t walk by a newsstand without seeing it on the cover of a dozen newspapers. Hell, you couldn’t even walk by a newsstand.”
“But as they say, nothing lasts forever. The first and second waves will be classics forever and the third was a lot of nostalgic fun. But honestly, I can’t remember anything that happened in Wave 4 and only read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia for 5.”
Indeed, while the Delta and Omicron spin-offs were both able to gross significant numbers at the morgue office, they ultimately failed to generate the initial spark that captured the hearts of millions of people inside of their homes.
“I was really scared of COVID when it first came out.” remarked long-time follower Sasha Little. “But now the lore is so inconsistent, at first it causes flu-like symptoms and loss of smell, but suddenly COVID can cause blood clots, brain fog and pink eye? Like, it’s so obviously just making up symptoms as it goes.”
“Honestly the pandemic should have ended with the vaccine rollout, it would have been so narratively satisfying and the perfect finale for the series [of events].”
Despite the lukewarm response, COVID has already released details about the upcoming seventh and eighth waves reportedly featuring longer mutations, mysterious new Greek letters and a potential crossover event with the Malarial Hemorrhagic Universe
