Masks are off! (More coronavirus satire)

You know what’s really scary? When you make the most sarcastic comment you can think of, only to find that your predictions have turned into reality a few short months later. In one of my lockdown posts, I joked that I was holding on to my useless (according to all the major scientific institutions at the time) face mask in case it became a requirement to leave your house. And sure enough, the last bastion of freedom has since succumbed to mask mania, aka “waterboarding light”. So stay tuned as this pseudoscience evolves. But since I’m apparently clairvoyant, I might as well give you a sneak preview how the War on Corona is going to pan out. By Christmas, you won’t be able to leave your house without a hazmat suit and special government permit that needs to be requested months in advance because the government officials that need to sign off on it are all working from home. Supply chains will become very fragile. If you have toddlers in your household and you are planning to give them a car for their 18th birthday, you should order it now, like people did back in the Soviet days. For now, when you’re not busy shopping for essentials or filling out furlough forms, you should go to the pub, the only place where you can more or less be yourself in the … uh … free world.

I know what you’re going to say. It’s all beyond ridiculous, many more people will die from cancer and heart attacks now that these conditions have been declared “non-essential” diseases, not to mention all the job losses and suicides and the people who will die from the common cold after losing their immune system to “social distancing”. Of course the cure is always worse than the disease. That’s why the rule in medicine is “First do no harm”. But here, we are dealing with politics, where the rule is “First, wreck the economy and run the country into the ground, then re-build with taxpayer-funded subsidies”. It’s the only tried and trusted way to transfer wealth from the general population to billionaire financiers.

And let’s not forget that the corona situation is serious. You may be lured into a false sense of security because the only person you know with coronavirus is a friend of a cousin of your bother-in-law who moved to Timbuktu years ago, but then, you don’t really know how your friends are doing because you haven’t seen them since March. Here in London, we can’t be sure that cases are really falling because we don’t have enough test kits to compile any reliable statistics. So there’s nothing we can do but count the days to the next mayoral elections. The corona alert system is just one notch away from Level 5, where our healthcare system would be at risk of being overwhelmed. Since our healthcare system regularly gets overwhelmed when a flu patient and a pregnant woman show up at the same time, we are looking at a very bleak winter (Hancock should have issued his warning against casual sex in the spring…).

At the same time, I see ample grounds for optimism. It’s way too early to declare that the corona measures aren’t working. We all need a little patience. I mean couples with kids have only just started arguing which sets of grandparents to un-invite from Christmas dinner and whether to re-invite them if their kids get locked up in their university dorms. Similarly, the debates which wedding guests to un-invite are still at an early stage. But in due course, we will see divorce rates spike and smoldering family feuds boil over. Can you imagine the amazing social distancing we will get when all these people decide not to speak to one another again in their lives?!?

Really, it’s just a question of our fearless leaders (okay, make that panicked leaders) not repeating their past mistakes, like that misguided initiative to get us back to work. Yes, politicians are understandably concerned about the economy. Please don’t give me that song and dance about how you’re working more effectively from home. We’ve never had a strong economy because you’re so good at pushing paper. The reason we had a strong economy in the past is that you were drinking gallons of coffee purchased from the likes of Starbucks, Costa, Pret’s and EAT to stay awake during endless meetings at the office, and disappeared to the pub whenever your boss wasn’t looking.

But that’s not an excuse for sending us back to the office — and in the dead of summer, too! If we’re serious about Cancel Culture, we first and foremost need to cancel work. Civilizationally advanced countries such as France have always treated August as a non-month in the office, and we shouldn’t stop embracing their culture just because we’ve put them on some random quarantine list along with about 150 other nations.

So don’t try to be the hero who saves the economy. For now, my advice to everyone would be to stay home all day, every day until the pace at which the rules change slows down a bit and you have a realistic chance of escaping the eye-watering fines that will need to be slapped onto everyone and their brother in an effort to fund all the corona bailout schemes.

But enough of all this corona nonsense! Let’s talk about something else. For example, what do you make of all these protests going on? I think the protesters are taking a big risk. You can never be sure that your fellow protesters will comply with social distancing rules in the heat of things. The risk is especially high at anti-mask protests. And if you catch the virus, but get squashed by a statue being toppled before you can be tested, you risk distorting the statistics. And it’s not like we’re living in the technological dark ages. If you feel strongly about something, just send a tweet! Another really hot topic that appears to have disappeared from the headlines is what to do with former terrorists living in North African refugee camps who want to come home, cancelled passport in one hand and a baby in the other. Now I totally understand that some people would want to bring her back just for the baby’s sake, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the very real risks these people pose to our society. After all, it is quite possible that access to corona test kits in refugee camps is even more limited than it is in London. And what about air pollution in London? Making the city largely car free appeared to be such a high priority until we were all instructed to avoid public transport for some bizarre reason that momentarily escapes me.

As you see, there are plenty of non-corona-related things to talk about. As far as the virus, one thing’s for sure: Gloves are off. (In case you don’t remember the gloves: people wore them at the start of the pandemic before touching a doorknob, because we were told by the … uh … scientific community that masks are useless, but viruses sit on doorknobs forever). Now it’s time for some major unmasking of all the quack wannabes out there. Masks are off!