For preventing the unvaccinated  people in Mississippi from being a burden on their friends, teachers, or waiters, and for making them beneficial to the public.

Dr. Jonathan Swift

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through a great southern college town, or travel throughout Mississippi, when they see the streets, schools, and retail stores crowded with unvaccinated parents, followed by three, four, or six children, all unmasked, and importuning every passerby by talking and breathing openly. These parents, instead of submitting to inoculation with the substances our selfless public health officials contracted with our brilliant pharmaceutical scientists to create, endanger the vaccinated and inculcate a familial ignorance in their helpless children who, as they grow up, either turn to various individualistic philosophies for want of civic responsibility, or eschew a respectable spot reserved for them in the socially contracted community of western social democratic society.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, on the backs, or at the heels of their unvaccinated parents is, in the present deplorable condition of the United States, a very great additional grievance. Therefore, whoever could devise a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the democratic order would deserve to have the public erect his or her statue in celebration of a preserver of the health of the nation.

My intention, however, is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of the unvaccinated: it is of a much greater extent and shall take in the whole number of the unvaccinated. Together, I consider the children and the unvaccinated parents who are little able to transmit democratic values to them, as those who unreasonably demand our tolerance of their selfish resistance to medication.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many months upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our public health experts, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just born may be protected by maternal isolation, for a solar year, with little need for medication: and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner, as, instead of becoming a risk to their parents, or their neighbors, or needing periodic hospitalization for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the motivation for vaccination, and partly to the economic security of many thousands.

There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent the multiplication of those prone to heart trouble or autoimmune diseases whose resistance to vaccination provides a surface credibility to hesitancy in general. The number of souls in Mississippi being usually reckoned 2.9 million, of these I calculate there may be about 1.8 million who are not fully vaccinated, a group including 228,000 children. The question therefore is, how will this number be treated and provided for? Under the present limit of around 1,000 ICU beds, this is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. We can neither employ them indoors, nor treat them when symptomatic. I am assured by our public health officers that a boy or a girl, before twelve years old, is not cleared for vaccination, and not enough foster families with an enlightened approach to vaccination exist to take these children in and isolate them after forced removal from vaccine-hesitant families. Indeed, by the age of 12, it is likely that such children may have formed a general resistance to the COVID vaccination campaign and will be irremediably contumacious.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured, by a very knowing public health officer of my acquaintance, that unvaccinated adults and their children, even if infected, can safely be eaten without risk of disease transmission as long as they are cooked to a temperature of at least 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Indeed, I understand that these poor, anti-science individuals, while deplorable in life and conduct, make a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled. I make no doubt that they will equally serve in a fricasee, a ragout, or an okra gumbo.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that, of the 1.8M unvaccinated persons in Mississippi, a single adult may provide enough protein for two weeks of meals, assuming a nose-to-tail culinary approach. A child will make two dishes at a socially distanced or masked entertainment for friends, and when a responsible family who has shown a full measure of love for neighbor by getting vaccinated dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good baked in wine on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned, upon average, that a child just born will weigh 7 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increase to 20 pounds.

I grant this fine food will be somewhat coveted, and therefore very proper to reserve for the vaccinated public health official. As they have already devoured most of the unvaccinated parents, they seem to have the best title to the children.

Unvaccinated infant flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in August, and a little before and after in red states; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent Australian physician, that there are more children born in red states about nine months after the SEC Championship Game than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after the bowl games, the markets will be more glutted than usual.

I have already computed the charge of feeding the child of an unvaccinated parent to be about $120 per month, and I believe no sensible person would repine to give $200 dollars for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when one has only some particular friend, or one’s own family to dine. Thus, by hosting large dinner parties, the vaccinated citizen will learn to be a good neighbor, and grow popular among his friends, the mother will have eighty dollars neat profit, and have a well-funded isolation until she produces another child or submits either to being consumed or getting vaccinated. Calculating the monthly charge for feeding an adult proves more difficult, but as a simple heuristic, I suggest a ratio based on weight. The average adult in the United States is 181 pounds, approximately 9 times the weight of a one-year-old. Thus, I suggest a starting point of around $1,800 for a healthy, average unvaccinated adult.

Those who are thriftier (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable work gloves and summer boots.

As to my City of Starkville, deer processing facilities may be reappointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of the county. Butchers, we may be assured, will not be lacking, yet I recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do with roasting pigs or human fetuses procured for federally funded scalp tissue research.

A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter, to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said many upright vaccinated citizens of Mississippi have, of late, destroyed their deer because these too may contract SARS-CoV2. He conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young university students, not exceeding 21 years of age, nor under eighteen. So great a number of both sexes in every county are now ready to starve or experience underemployment for being excluded from work and university and these may be disposed of profitably by their parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a communitarian, I cannot be more than half in agreement with his sentiments for, as to the males, my Australian acquaintance assured me from frequent experience that their flesh was generally tough and lean by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them would destroy the neat economy of my solution.

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of unvaccinated people who are aged, diseased, or maimed. I have desired to employ my thoughts on what course may be taken, to ease the nation of so grievous an incumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying of COVID’s many variants, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot get work without proof of vaccination, and consequently pine away from want of nourishment, to a degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength or breath to perform it, and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.

The advantages of the proposal I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of evangelicals, with whom we are yearly overrun, being prodigious breeders in Mississippi, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay in the state with a misguided design to continually divert Mississippi to conservative political ends.

Secondly, the isolated, unemployed, unvaccinated parents will have something valuable of their own while we let them live, which by law may be made liable to a distress, and help to pay their landlord’s rent, their ability to work being already prevented, and money a thing unknown.

Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of 1.8M unvaccinated, from two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than 29 thousand dollars per annum, Mississippi’s stock will be thereby increased 52 billion overnight, besides the profit of a new dish, introduced to the tables of all vaccinated persons of fortune in the state, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.

Fourthly, this food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best recipes for dressing it to perfection.  Consequently, restaurateurs will have their houses frequented by all the vaccinated, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating. A skillful cook, who understands how to oblige his or her guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they are pleased to pay. This will, in some measure, restore the state’s dining and leisure industry affected by pre-vaccination enforced shutdowns.

Fifthly, this would be a great inducement to vaccination, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of citizens towards the public health officials. At the same time, it is clear that some individuals will remain intransigent in their opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine and will thus not deprive the vaccinated of selecting the finest, plumpest children in the market. In addition, this proposal will strengthen marriages; unvaccinated red-state husbands will become as fond of their wives, during the time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, or sows when they are ready to farrow. These deplorable husbands will also be more likely to refrain from beating or kicking them (as is too frequent a practice in red states) for fear of a miscarriage.

Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of thousands of carcasses in our exportation of farmed catfish: the propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well grown, fat yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a CDC annual meeting, or any other public entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity.

Supposing that one thousand families in this city would be constant customers for young flesh, besides others who might have it at merry meetings, particularly at weddings and football tailgates, I compute that Starkville would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest of Mississippi (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining 218,000 under 12 years of age. As for adult flesh, as lamentable as market forces may be, it will be difficult to dictate a ratio of breeding stock to broilers until our best economic planners fully understand demand.

I can think of no single objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in Mississippi, aggravating the state’s low workforce participation problem. This I freely admit. I desire the reader will observe, however, that I calculate my remedy for this one individual state, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no expert talk to me of other expedients: of promoting sensible telework policies for exposed individuals, regardless of vaccination status; of legalizing and promoting the trial of time-tested therapeutics; of promoting the elevation of vitamin D levels in the general population; of promoting weight loss; of using persuasion and not coercion to convince the vaccine hesitant; of allowing for a difference of opinion in our neighbors on the advisability of assuming the same risk profile, and thus the appropriateness of mandating the same remedy for all; of allowing liability lawsuits for the vaccine injured; of making accurate tests available more broadly; of encouraging the vaccinated to temper their certainty and avoid coercion; of helping the overly fearful to realize that vaccination status does not prevent contraction or spread of COVID; and of ensuring freedom to work and learn independently of one’s willingness to receive certain medications.

I repeat, therefore, let no man or woman talk to me of these and the like expedients, till he hath at least some glimpse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.

But, as to myself, having been wearied out for many months with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging Mississippi. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistency, to admit a long continuance in salt or refrigeration.

After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to reject any offer, proposed by wise persons, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points.

First, as things now stand, how will they be able to find food and raiment for 1.8 million useless mouths and backs prevented from work and learning? And secondly, there are, among these 1.8 million creatures in humane figure throughout this state, many parents who are unable to work or learn due to vaccination restrictions and their own contumacy. I desire those politicians or public health officials who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that they will first ask these parents whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortune, as they have since gone through, by the oppression of restrictions of work, testing, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, the constant need for documentation to travel, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed forever.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my state, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the vaccinated. I have no unvaccinated children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest is an adult, and my wife just past childbearing.

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“Jonathan Swift” is an instructor at Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS.