The Rich Republicans of Real Housewives of Orange County Think Covid-19 Is an Elaborate Joke

After a year of terrible Instagram posts and misinformation from the very worst women the O.C. has to offer, covid-19 made its official debut on The Real Housewives of Orange County Wednesday night. It was fucking horrifying.

In this season’s premiere episode a few weeks back, producers teased a flashforward of scenes from the pandemic: empty grocery stores, panic in the streets, a desolate New York City. After episode four, viewers are inching closer to the reality I, personally, do not care to relive. But since it is still the early days on the show—somewhere around mid-February—it was not pandemonium in the streets that ushered in the first utterance of the word “coronavirus.” It was a Wisteria Lane-esque mid-day drinking session at Kelly Dodd’s house.

After she poured Emily Simpson a sad Vodka cucumber concoction, which featured her Positive Beverage vitamin water, and then drank it, Dodd blurted our “I don’t have cooties, I don’t have coronavirus.” She then called it the “Corona Del Mar Virus,” and said in her confessional: “I don’t understand why people are freaking out about this coronavirus. It’s like the H1N1, it’s like the swine flu. Things like this happen from time to time.”

As would be soon revealed to the entire planet, things like “this” do not, in fact, happen from “time to time.” The last eight months have been unprecedented in almost every way, and there is still no end in sight. Dodd has also made quite the name for herself in the months following this “joke” about the “Corona Del Mar virus,” from her fits of Trumpism on social media to blatant covid-19 denial. That she would be the first to utter the words onscreen is not particularly a surprise.

Still, with the election drawing to a close, and Dodd’s sweaty little president likely on his way back to his crumbling Palm Beach swamp palace, I do feel some small amount of satisfaction at how utterly stupid this woman is, and how she absolutely deserves everything that’s coming for her.