Despite the ever-growing severity of the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic and national rebukes of the CDC’s failures to handle it, members of the CDC decided to “chillax” during the first half of their Wednesday meeting by playing the icebreaker game “Rose Bud Thorn” for an hour and forty-five minutes. The game, which involves participants saying both good and bad things about their week along with something they’re looking forward to, was mired with controversy.

            “We were totally gonna get to the whole testing kit thing, but Brandon brought up the point that ending on a thorn lets bad energy into the room,” said Robert R. Redfield, who is somehow simultaneously the current, former, and future director of the CDC. “So we spent a good twenty minutes on what the proper order should be. We eventually settled on thorn, bud, rose, bud, rose, followed by three more buds just to ensure we were thinking about the future.”

            “After we got settled on the rules of the game, we thought it would be important for everyone to get an equal amount of time for the sake of fairness,” said Brandon Braxton, who was recently hired by Trump due to his alleviative name and obscene wealth. “So we timed the first person to go, who was Robert, and made sure that each subsequent person got exactly the same amount of time, which was twenty-seven minutes and twenty seconds.”

            After the brief delay, the three-person meeting could get started, or at least everyone thought. “Robbie totally forgot to talk about how he was looking to that new Steve Carell TV show… oh what’s it called… ahh don’t tell me…” said Mira Jacobson. “So we went down that rabbit hole.”

            Unfortunately, the meeting never really got to the subject of the coronavirus.