All articles filed in L.A. Alfonso

The first public COVID-19 vaccination was an opportunity to snap a meaningful photograph to commemorate a historical moment that could influence vaccine skepticism. On December 8th, The New York Times published a picture of a man getting the second public vaccination worldwide whom they identified as William Shakespeare, 81, with a joke cribbed from Twitter; “if the first Briton to get the shot was Patient 1A, would Shakespeare be 2B or not 2B?”

“Language is a virus from outer space. The word has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host,” says William Burroughs. He proposes a theory of “the unrecognized virus” in his 1962 novel The Ticket That Exploded. He suggests, “A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host.”

In January of 2020, a 2011 film called Contagion directed by Stephen Soderbergh catapulted to the top of many personal watch-lists. This is not the result of some clever marketing. The film wasn’t even available in any popular subscription streaming services in the U.S. This started as an internet subculture phenomenon.