COVID-19 Lessons From The Walking Dead

Check out The Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 2 titled "Bloodletting" on Netflix for some lessons on humanity and viruses most notably from farmer/veterinarian Herschel Greene.  The episode aired in the USA on October 23, 2011.  Though it originally aired almost 9 years ago its subject matter and the dialogue is remarkably prophetic in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic spreading the world.  I'm finding this watching of The Walking Dead (from the beginning) to be a primer for surviving COVID-19.


"We get our behinds kicked for a while, then we bounce back.  It's nature correcting herself.  Restoring some balance."  
Scott Wilson's Herschel Green talking to Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes in a reflective moment from the episode.


So what's happening?  In Season 2, Episode 2 the hunt for Sophia is in high gear and in the process Carl is shot and rushed to Herschel's farm for triage.  In one of the most dramatic scenes Rick is running across a field, carrying Carl's floppy body.  Both of them are covered in blood.

For an episode titled "Bloodletting" there was surprisingly little of it.  What we got instead were outpourings of emotion and frustration, much like during today's COVID-19 worldwide shutdown.  In Season 2 of The Walking Dead they were trying to strike a balance between gore and humanity.  With COVID-19 I would say we're still barely a quarter way through our Season 1.

Back in Senoia, Georgia (where The Walking Dead filmed) we quickly learn a few things as the episode opens:  Carl is alive and, as luck would have it, there's a farm about a mile away with a kindly old country doctor named Hershel Greene.  Hershel's actually a veterinarian, as we find out later, but he seems to know what he's doing, calling for bandages and blood STAT!
Young Carl was very lucky—the bullet that struck him went through a deer he had been admiring first, slowing down enough not to kill him.  Only now, there are six bullet fragments inside Carl that Hershel must remove.  In one of the series most brutal scenes yet (which, obviously, is saying a lot), Hershel tugs out a piece of the slug while the boy cries out in agony, a reminder of how barbarous medicine was before the advent of anesthesia.  He informs Rick and Shane that without surgery to repair torn blood vessels, Carl will die.  Anesthesia will be necessary.  And where would we find that?  A hospital maybe?

Otis, the remorseful shooter muses "The hospital burned down," After a long pause he says . . .the High School.  At a local high school turned FEMA emergency center that's been overrun by, you guessed it, zombies.  Think Italy or Spain late March 2020.

Now back in 2020 we're just getting to the field hospitals being set up in USA so we're still a bit behind the curve but the scenes are amazingly prescient.

That trip to Fort Benning at the end of Season 1 (after the CDC was blown to smithereens) hasn't exactly worked out the way everyone had hoped.  Carl has been shot, little Siophia is missing and T-Dog is in the midst of an infection fever on account of his sliced arm (in a fun moment of meta-realization, T-Dog muses on how he's the only black guy in the group—which typically means imminent death in most horror movies).
With their forward motion halted, several of the survivors begin to turn inward and reflect on how crappy their situation really is.   I think in USA we're there now, wondering how we wound up with Trump at the helm of a sinking ship.  Republicans have suddenly become Democratic Socialists and voted to send a $2 trillion (that's trillion with a "t") bailout package to Trump to spend.  Surely zombies are just around the corner for us in 2020.

In The Walking Dead T-Dog" "The whole world's having a tough time.  Open your eyes;" Daryl, after a touching moment where he comforts Carole:  "Am I the only one Zen around here?  Good lord." And sweet old Dr. Hershel Green, who explains to Rick that mankind has survived many a plague.  "We get our behinds kicked for awhile, then we bounce back.  It's nature correcting herself.  Restoring some balance.

Herschel is always one of the show's most rational characters.  When Lori, skeptical of an animal vet slicing open her son, says to Hershel,


Aren't we all indeed.