There's a virus that has been with us for a long time and will be with us long after Covid-19 has ceased to be an issue, and it found its way into the body politic last week during the AstraZeneca rumpus.
es, our old friend nationalism managed to make it in there somehow, maintaining its hard-won reputation as the enemy of so many things pertaining to the greater good.
Months ago, Bill Gates, who has been accused by conspiracists of using this opportunity to implant monitoring microchips in billions of people, was warning of the dangers of "vaccine nationalism"; warning that the pandemic really needs to be seen in global terms, not as some sort of puerile competition for bragging rights.
Well, Mr Gates can be warning as much as he likes, but Tory MP Andrew Bridgen was still on Today with Claire Byrne, effectively calling the AstraZeneca affair a win for Brexit Britain against the infernal bureaucrats of the EU.
He was doing this against a backdrop of his beloved Brexit already imposing on his own people a level of bureaucracy unimagined in human history and a world-beating Covid death rate enabled by a prime minister who faced every new challenge of the pandemic with the moral courage of the incorrigible cad for whom each new day brings the result of a pregnancy test that has gone the wrong way.
Undaunted, Bridgen was claiming this victory for old Blighty bounding ahead of the EU in the vaccination race - without dwelling on the pesky details that it was already far too late for about 100,000 souls and that the vaccines themselves were developed with massive support from, er, the EU.
While the AstraZeneca deal has gone horribly wrong, the EU would be taking no advice from a leading Brexiteer on deals that have gone horribly wrong - it would also be hearing in that conversation the dark tones of nationalism, that inexhaustible source of wrongness.
It was Billy Kelleher MEP up against Bridgen in the debate. Billy is carving a niche on Claire Byrne's show as the man trying to talk a bit of sense into Brexiteers - he was recently faced with the unmerciful eejitry of Ben Habib.
Here Billy was explaining to Bridgen that it's absurd to be talking about a company such as AstraZeneca being somehow based in England, that they're a global corporation that enters agreements on that basis.
Billy, fair play to him, was here reversing centuries of the historical stereotype, whereby the Englishman is the pragmatist trying to coax Paddy out of his obscurantist gibberish, but it's still a hard station because nationalism gets its way just by expressing itself, by rejoicing in its own limitations.
We can hardly claim immunity as there was another outbreak of the deadly Irish variant with an IRA funeral in Derry last week, heavily attended by sympathisers and three actual Sinn Féin representatives because, well, I guess some things are more important than staying alive.
Such is the power of nationalism, which has in recent years been the active ingredient used by the forces of the far right in the UK and the US, ramming through their sinister projects.
It's easier to take away the rights of working people if you're doing it for the sake of 'sovereignty', just as it was easier for Trump and his people to get on with their plundering if they were doing it for 'America First'.
Still, there was this nagging sense that the sluggish EU had been done up like a kipper by the agile UK.
It didn't look good, to be having a proverbial bar-room brawl with Big Pharma while the Brits were busily jabbing away at what's left of their population.
And it looked terrible on Friday night with the Article 16 shemozzle, the EU Commission seized for a few hours by a mutant strain that caused its internationalists to go tribal - perhaps a prolonged exposure to the inexplicable urges of UK negotiators will do that to you.
You'd nearly forget it wasn't a bad idea originally for the EU to organise its vaccine programme as it had done, on the proportional basis - otherwise, our old friend the vaccine nationalism would kick in and countries might start bidding against one another; we recall Trump's vision in which states would be competing against other states for ventilators, which he seemed to think was a great idea.
So, yes, the EU position on AstraZeneca and beyond calls to mind the words of the great New Orleans epidemiologist Dr John: "I been in the right trip, but I must have used the wrong car."
I know this is not a very encouraging assessment; it's much more enjoyable being Andrew Bridgen testing the patience of poor Billy Kelleher.
Indulging in the simplistic pleasures of the Brexiter can be more rewarding in the moment than being part of the higher global consciousness along with your Fianna Fáil MEP.
That's how the malaise of nationalism gets its claws into you - and AstraZeneca will not be delivering a vaccine for this one either, any time soon.
AOC right to scream blue murder over push to 'move on'
America has had its chance in recent weeks to inoculate itself against Trump for good - or at least stop him infecting those outside his tribe by running again - but astoundingly it seems they're going to give it a swerve.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at least, is seeing this one as big as a basketball, refusing to "move on", enraged the GOP is still enhancing the Trump brand of Impunity.
This Diary has tipped AOC for greatness, but we didn't realise she would already present such a threat to the forces of Trumpism.
She put it like this, in a tweet responding to senator Ted Cruz about the scandal of poor people making silly money out of 'the markets': "I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there's common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago, so you can sit this out.
"Happy to work with almost any other GOP that aren't trying to get me killed. In the meantime, if you want to help, you can resign."
Harsh words indeed, but, well… fair enough.
I sense the GOP's fear of AOC is driven not just by racism and sexism and bad politics but something visceral that hits them personally. She's a kind of Centre of Excellence in herself, standing as the ultimate rebuke to the degeneracy and the decline of their aristocracy.
They know deep down that their mediocre sons and daughters will only get into Harvard if they come with a hefty donation from Mom and Pop, whereas AOC could get there with a triple-A rating while simultaneously working in a bar in the Bronx, eight nights a week.
No wonder she says they're trying to kill her.
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The other AOC - perhaps the original AOC - Dr Anthony O'Connor signed off Twitter last week due to "someone close to Stephen Donnelly in the DMs telling me that my advocacy is undermining my professionalism and clinical role. So I'm out. Too much now. Stay safe".
The hostility toward the eminent gastroenterologist based at Tallaght hospital isn't just creepy in itself, it reveals a culture that's common among our ruling classes.
If you've been listening to them on RTÉ radio on any Sunday morning for the past 20 years or so, you'll get this vibe that they're often withholding something, reluctant to give out too much information to the masses.
It's like the doctor who doesn't give you the full picture because he doesn't trust you to handle it.
This makes them very boring, on the whole, but they don't mind that.
AOC, almost uniquely, isn't boring, but an essentially generous spirit trying to make sense of many things, almost like some regular person - if that can be said of anyone from Cork.
He's also running for chairperson of the Labour Party, and I hope he wins.
