WASHINGTON — As the infection rates and death counts throughout the nation continue to slowly creep upwards, citizens throughout the United States have begun to collectively wonder whether the coronavirus pandemic is one of those scripted fights that you’re supposed to lose.
“Things have been so hard for so long, I’m just starting to think this is one of those classic situations where you’re supposed to keep taking damage until you’re within an inch of life and then suddenly there’s some divine intervention that saves you and moves the story along,” said local man Ryan Wassinger, haphazardly eating indoors at a restaurant without using any hand sanitizer first. “After I saw that Texas is opening back up to 100%, it made me think they must be trying to speed up the process. Makes sense, in these situations you want to get close to death as quickly as possible.”
Others agreed that the seemingly insurmountable odds of the nation’s pandemic response has all the trappings of an impossible-to-beat boss fight.
“This is just like Mega Man X when you have to fight Vile in the first stage,” said Louis Cole while confidently throwing away face masks he was certain he wouldn’t need any more. “It’s like, hang on, I’m supposed to beat this huge scary guy piloting a giant fighting robot suit? And he’s shooting these huge bullets at me in between punching me with his giant robot arms? But of course, when you get down to 1 HP, your friend Zero comes in and saves the day. That’s the exact same thing that’s happening with the pandemic. Once we’re all sick, I’m sure Zero will come and save us like he always does.”
At press time, Americans started to second-guess the scripted fight theory after realizing that being incorrect could mean accidentally triggering a game over.