Are you a COVID Champ or a Novel Chump?

Take this simple 1-minute quiz and find out if you won the pandemic! Pass/fail guide below.

1. Did you ever compare the novel coronavirus to the flu? (“But I said it in January, 2020” is still a yes.)
2. Did you ever complain about public health measures enacted by a government or business, i.e.: requirement to wear a mask, stay home “orders” (they were really just toothless resolutions), closures of places of public accommodation, etc.?
3. Did you eat in a restaurant at any time between March 11, 2020 and now (April 15, 2021)?
4. Did you take a vacation that required flying during that same timeframe?
5. Did you pressure anyone not to wear a mask or spend time indoors with someone not in their household?
6. Did you spend time indoors with anyone not in your household? (Someone in your “COVID pod” is not in your household if they don’t live with you, and “But we all took COVID tests first!” is still a yes.)
7. Did you get together with family outside your household in 2020, because “Thanksgiving was too important?”
8. Did you get together with family outside your household in 2020, because “Christmas was too important?”
9. Did you give in to pressure to spend time indoors with someone from outside your household, because they were a close friend and couldn’t possibly have COVID?
10. Did you let your kids play with other kids during the pandemic?
11. Did you ever wear a mask around your chin while out in public?
12. Did you bend the rules or get “surplus” vaccine before your age/risk group was officially eligible?
13. Did you post your vaccination card to social media like a goddamn trophy?
14. Did you stop following COVID safety protocols because you were “just so over it?”

Scoring

Give yourself one point for every question you could honestly answer an emphatic “yes” to and zero points for any other answer. A score of 13 or 14 is passing. A score 0–12 is a failing grade.

Congratulations, You Failed!

At least, chances are you failed. Nearly everyone did, even people who said “I’ve been sooooooo careful.” Most of us have made decisions that prolonged the pandemic and enabled variants to emerge. We’ve done it by prioritizing individual pleasure over collective success. We’ve done it by treating the vaccination like a personal panacea. We’ve done it by being antisocial and selfish. We’ve done it by denying there was a problem, by minimizing the problem once it became obvious that it was real, by explaining away deaths and sicknesses, by conflating risk with completely unrelated considerations, by wishful thinking, by treating vaccines like an unsinkable lifeboat we would elbow anyone out of our way to get to first, by simply not caring.

We didn’t try, because we didn’t want to. That’s who we are, evidently.

And this was just a warmup. We’ve got bigger problems that require even more of the discipline and honesty we failed to exhibit in this crisis.