This is a bold statement, but we're gonna run with it: This may be the strangest virus-themed Judy Garland cover ever sung by a departing director of a major federal agency:
National Institute of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, who announced his intention to retire earlier this year, bid farewell to his role in the NIH by picking up a guitar and playing his own COVID-centric rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" titled "Somewhere Past the Pandemic."
"Somewhere past the pandemic, when we're free, there's a life I remember, full of activity," Collins sang in his parody. "Somewhere past the pandemic, no quarantine, we'll all stay well and healthy, thanks to a safe vaccine."
Well, whatever the artistic merits of the director's song, the theme is on-point.
It's sad because Collins was a real scientist once upon a time: one of the experts who sequenced the human genome! It seems the 'Rona has addled his brains.
