WARNING SIGNS: The Science Person, Former TV Personality/Presenter & COVIDsteria Anal Swabbing Evangelist

Excerpt from "COVIDsteria: An Oral History of America's Great Reset" - see https://covidsteria.substack.com/p/covidsteria-table-of-contents

In its heyday, the now-defunct Public TV (PTV) had created many iconic shows and characters for American children to watch - including The Science Person. I caught up with The Science Person to discuss the person's role in promoting COVIDsteria anal swabbing and vaccination. 

Before we begin, let me tell you that my preferred pronouns are “ze,” “person,” and "the person." But you may address me as “The Science Person.” [The Science Person smiles.]

Ok, no problem…

But I am not a scientist – I just played one on TV! I was a New York City educator teaching classes on gender and sex education at a public elementary school. I heard that Public TV (PTV) was having a hard time finding a presenter for a new children’s TV show about science. They needed a TV presenter who could check all of their boxes and not offend any marginalized group who would feel left out if the presenter did not represent them.

Fortunately, my gender and sexuality are fluid. I can speak Spanish because my father was an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic. That means he was Latinx with some African slave and Caribbean native ancestry along with some white ancestors. 

My mother’s mother was part Native American. I get my high cheekbones from her! Her father was a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan – so I could also be considered Asian-American as Pakistanis are from South Asia. 

The only quality I lacked was having some Pacific-Islander in me. However, PTV said that wouldn’t matter since the Dominican Republic was an island. They said most American viewers wouldn’t be able to locate it on a map, or they might assume it was in the Pacific. I was the only person they could find in the whole country who could check all of their boxes – so I naturally got the gig!

Even though I was not a scientist, playing The Science Person on TV was never difficult. All I had to do was read the teleprompter for the science stuff and be my bubbly self!

How did COVIDsteria impact your science show?  

Well, darling, COVIDsteria hit at the worst possible time. I was in the middle of doing my transition, and my TV show was following that closely. But soon, everything on the show had to become about COVIDsteria rather than my transition. That greatly troubled me. I felt the new focus would put progress for transgender people like me back decades.

Even worst, my transition surgeries got disrupted. At first, transition surgeries were not essential medical procedures like abortions under most state lockdown executive orders! It only took a couple of episodes of the Science Person for me to have public school kids around the country, or rather their teachers, sending angry emails and making phone calls to Governors’ offices around the country to get that crazy rule changed! 

But there was nothing I could do to change the focus of the show. PTV wanted everything 24/7 on their network to be about how COVIDsteria was an airborne Ebola and a Black Death with some Spanish flu mixed in that required a great reset to contain. They also wanted it emphasized how there were no treatments for COVIDsteria until you needed a hospital ventilator.

When Team Science won the elections and took over, everything for my show immediately changed for the better. My show’s focus shifted from how deadly COVIDsteria was to the importance of getting the nDNA vaccine. 

More importantly for the future of the LGBTQ movement, the network also wanted to emphasize the importance of being regularly anal swabbed to check for COVIDsteria and COVIDsteria antibodies. The network felt that young school children would be in the best position to convince homophobic swabbing hesitant parents that there was nothing wrong with or gross about being anal swabbed. I also believed that children would enjoy having a good swabbing at the start of every school day if only their homophobic parents would agree to it!