HUMAN WRECKAGE

Panic Pandemic!

There was a virus going ‘round, Papa caught it and he died last spring – Bobbie Gentry, ‘Ode to Billie Joe’

The sudden scourge of a new or previously unknown disease is nothing new in human history. Alas, our species’ collective memory is afflicted with amnesia. Mass hysteria has caused our herd to stampede away from the fear of the unknown once again. When confronted with the palpable fear of the mob you find out what you’re made of. You can join the mob or hold it in contempt, common sense versus ignorance. On a related fashion note, people who wear useless surgical masks in public look really stupid.

Mortality is a limited-time offer, eventually the warranty expires. Death is inevitable; it may be deferred but is never preventable. So, you know, it’s always going to be something one way or another: the ultimate fact of life. In the fantastical human drama death will always arrive according to the script, at what we perceive to be the right time and it will be merciful, swift and painless. When the Grim Reaper (it is our nature to anthropomorphise a natural process) ad libs, we ineffectual directors feel more powerless than ever.

Helplessness leads to panic whose manifestation frequently descends into the theatre of the absurd. It’s not unreasonable to believe that a percentage of people are avoiding Corona beer in order to avoid the coronavirus. Runs on toilet tissue. The mob however is not a unified bloc. With various stock indexes roiling over broken supply chains and cratering productivity, a millennial socialist will crow that the rich are finally getting theirs. I’ve read too that coronavirus is some sort of karmic payback on cisgender society for the AIDS crisis. A tweet of the times I suppose because no activist no matter how radical would have typed that during the SARS epidemic at the turn of the century.

Meanwhile somewhere south of the Medicine Line, a crafty traveler has just booked a Princess Cruise at a bargain because COVID-19 is a hoax perpetuated by the Democratic Party even if the vice-president has said the Dems hope the respiratory ailment will kill millions of Americans. Private jet rentals have skyrocketed. It’s one thing to demonize a microbe, but to commercialize it and politicize it is insanity. You just want to wash your hands of this farce and the human condition – albeit thoroughly.

I am a rational being. I believe I can keep calm and carry on while taking simple and sensible precautions. I have a pleasure trip to Toronto planned for the end of April, tickets for the flight and three public events in hand. Should the events be cancelled or postponed and federal and provincial health authorities discourage leisure travel I will be annoyed but I will abide. I am prepared to do my part as best I can.

But I’m afraid of other people. I have smoked 25 cigarettes a day for 40 years. Unsurprisingly, I cough from time to time. I’m petrified that I’ll experience a fine throat-oyster bout of smoker’s hacking in the wrong place at the wrong time only to be swarmed by the paranoid mob and public health workers in hazmat suits. Zealots everywhere and from all sides and me torn apart or tested; no one is immune from madness or draconian measures. There’s nothing new under the sun.

Addendum: This news is about an hour old. Prime Minister Trudeau has isolated himself because his wife Sophie has exhibited symptoms of infection. You know how this is going to shake down on social media. It will go viral and he will be pilloried for running and hiding from a national crisis instead of being lauded for setting an example for all Canadians to emulate.                            

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative record of human foibles since 2013. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9.