Notes on 'COVID-19': That pandemic pitch of yours is way, way out there

From the reject pile: 

Here are some notes on the manuscript for your novel COVID-19. Won't sugar-coat it, I did not much like this story.

First, that a new pandemic should originate in China and be caused by a never-before-seen virus that jumps to humans from another species is rather too predictable. This has happened before and has been steadily warned about by science for as long as we can remember.

Hasn't Bill Gates been banging this drum for the last decade? Haven't they made a couple of big movies with precisely that premise? That the virus in question originates from wildlife whose habitat we are destroying, also no surprise.

It is hard to believe that the world, in 2020, could be so unprepared for something so widely anticipated.

That the character of the president of the United States might be a malignant idiot isn't a stretch but we all felt that in this case you were laying it on a bit thick: stupid, corrupt, senile, sexual predator, compromised by Russian intelligence, with the symptoms of tertiary syphilis and addicted to speed? Further, supposing we accept this, it is too much to believe that such a character's failure to act on the pandemic would not be checked by other institutions. Is everyone in the United States going to sit on their hands while some horror clown in the Oval Office lets the country burn?

You are talking about the United State of America, not some shithole country. And later in the story you have the Swedes bungling the response. None of this is plausible.

Some other things no one would believe

The socially distanced love scenes were hard to follow and are not sexy, merely weird.

Young people are stupid and reckless but they cannot be as completely witless as they are in this story.

Characters are quarantined in relative comfort and yet some seem to spontaneously go mad. I never understood this.

Having the Black, Latino and Indigenous characters suffer disproportionately from the disease is not ticking any "diversity" boxes, if that was your idea.

In earlier chapters a few people are wearing masks, in later chapters you describe more characters wearing them until nearly all the characters are in masks all the time.

Are people wearing masks or not? And comedy emerging from misunderstandings because one character can't make out what another is saying because they are masked grows tired fast. Everyone having to repeat themselves all the time doesn't work for me. (Though I should say the scene involving the holdup at the liquor store did come off genuinely funny stuff there.)

You call this an ending?

Perhaps my greatest issue with the COVID-19 manuscript is the ending, or lack thereof.

The story seems to be building to some conclusion where everyone dies and wild creatures reclaim the earth or there is the miraculous discovery of a vaccine by the protagonist but then we find ourselves on the final page with no resolution.

More specifically the vaccine storyline is all over the place. One moment we believe discovery is imminent, the next we are being told there might never be a vaccine and by the end we still don't know what is going to happen. The postmodern open-ended narrative is beloved by authors, but trust us: it is loathed by the general readership. People want to know how this ends.

I know the process has been a struggle for you, you have been working alone, in isolation, for months but we are going to pass on COVID-19. 

We will look at anything else you have so long as it is nothing to do with policing or medicine. We are most interested in pure diversion with absolutely no connection to our current reality. If you have anything light and silly, and the frothier the better, or in the capes and magic hat fantasy we would love to see it.

We're all in this together … but not on this.

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