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[Rossetti's sonnet about a plague is anagrammed into another sonnet about the dangers of bogus solutions during such times, which also contains a relevant constraint:]
The Plague (A sonnet by Christina Rossetti)
"Listen, the last stroke of death’s noon has struck -
The plague is come", a gnashing Madman said,
And laid him down straightway upon his bed.
His writhed hands did at the linen pluck;
Then all is over. With a careless chuck
Among his fellows he is cast. How sped
His spirit matters little: Many dead
Make men hard-hearted. "Place him on the truck.
Go forth into the burial-ground and find
Room at so much a pitful for so many.
One thing is to be done; one thing is clear:
Keep thou back from the hot unwholesome wind,
That it infect not thee." Say, is there any
Who mourneth for the multitude dead here?
A Big Mistake
When horrid things take place, we'll tell our kid
Some incoherent tosh to ease that dread,
And children need this aid to close the lid
On gruesome phobias inside those heads.
But uninformed adults that want delusion,
That breach the law with childish indignation,
Might mess up years of airtight, apt conclusions -
Then force a trauma on the population.
I'd highly recommend to know for sure
The hidden facts - and not to overnight
Some shipment of placebos and fake cures
Which mainly make this worse and fuel this fright;
When monumental days shake us apart,
The "mugs" are those that only think they're smart.
[In tribute to the good science helping us through the Corona crisis, I planted an acrostic down the poem of the "Rod of Asclepius" - the healthcare symbol of a staff with a coiled snake around it... and to depict the slimy snake-oil merchants, the acrostic snake I coiled around the staff spells out "Corona Scheming":]
