From Coven 13 to Covid-19

Continuing the coronavirus theme, (after all, the real world is), it's been bugging me as to what the official name of Covid-19 was reminding me of.  Then I finally remembered: back in the day there was a occult fiction magazine called Coven 13.  Which is probably why every time I hear the term Covid-19 I keep getting visions of naked people dancing around a fire under the full moon.  Perhaps that is the true origin of coronavirus- it's a witches curse put upon us by disgruntled pagans.  To get back to the magazine, it published four issues between 1969 and 1970, before changing its name to Witchcraft and Sorcery, under which title it published another five issues.  This was the very first issue of Coven 13: 

There was also a heavy metal band called 'Coven 13' in the mid eighties to early nineties, but as I'd never heard of them until I was researching the magazine, I don't get any mental images of Covid-19 as a metal guitar riff. 

Over the weekend I was watching the Italian science fiction film  Contamination and it was an interesting juxtaposition between scenes on the news of South Korean soldiers in white hazmat suits cleaning up coronavirus infected areas, with scenes in the film of guys in hazmat suits harvesting alien eggs on a south American coffee plantation.  It's very strange to see an image which has become something of a cliche is certain types of film being played out for real on the news.  It also made me think that maybe coronavirus isn't the result of a witch's curse, or a cover for the zombie apocalypse, but rather the result of an alien infection.  Perhaps some of those eggs as seen in Contamination came down in China and exploded, infecting everyone in the vicinity with a horrible  virus.  (IN the film, infected people explode - why, I have no idea as the script offers no explanation).

It's no good, I really do read and watch far too much trash...