COVID-19 hysteria peaked (let’s hope) this week, and what a week it was.

Every project I was working on from sports, to music to awards show red carpets – all cancelled but one. Coachella was moved to October and so far, SDCC remains in place, thankfully. I’ve joked about it for years, but who knew that people could really be so stupid? If we didn’t believe it before, there’s no reason not to, now.

Forests will suffer for centuries from the baseless TP and paper towel hoarding that took place this week. Fuck, even Amazon ran out of toilet paper. That’s when you know shit’s serious. I understand, people assume they will have to stay in their homes for two weeks and won’t want to go out, so the “smart” thing to do is buy a 10 or 70 week supply of bathroom tissue, all the hand soap they can carry, hole up and practice schadenfreude.

Now, I enjoy the dark gems in life as much as the next guy; hell, I spent most of last year consuming ALL of the foreign language crime/suspense series that Netflix could serve up and still wanted more, but this level of panic rivals that of Orson Welles’ 1938 Radio Broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

“The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee.“

At least these folks had a somewhat legitimate reason to be spooked, though. There’s no excuse for the way we’re acting right now. We’re supposed to be advanced, intelligent, informed and resourceful; aren’t we? For Christ’s sake, if extraterrestrials came upon us now, they’d think we were morons!

People, we have a very serious issue in this country, we DO NOT LIKE TO WASH OUR HANDS. That alone has probably caused far more illness than we like to admit. Because we have issues with handwashing and subsequently began getting sick so often, our society started to demand “a pill” to treat everything whether it could actually help or not. Our doctors threw antibiotics at us for years to appease our miserable asses. As a result, we have incredibly dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria, highly transmissible, lethal viruses which seem to appear every few years and just the latest in pandemics: novel coronavirus COVID-19.

It’s funny, SUDDENLY you close-talkers don’t want to stand too close, don’t want to touch anyone, you can’t bear to think about jamming into clubs elbow to elbow and sweating all over each other, or going into a public restroom, Where you once may have run your hands over every freakin’ surface in which you encountered, you force yourself to keep your hands in pockets.

Oh, so … NOW you want to bump elbows with me to mitigate possible germ transfer?

*Queue maniacal Ginger laughter*

Please. I’d rather just flip you the bird, exchange NO pathogens, release a bit of my pent up aggression in the process and call it a day.

And of course, this furnishes just one more reason for all those women who have absolutely no business hovering over a toilet, (oh, and you know who you are) to justify spraying urine 10 ft. in every direction when using a bathroom outside of their home. (Honestly, some days I’d rather put my ass in a urinal than attempt to find one useable toilet in a woman’s restroom.) You know you don’t have the thigh muscles, so just lay down a few layers of toilet paper, sit and save all of us that must come after you the trouble!

I mean, you just bought 300 cases of toilet paper; if there was ever a time you could afford to carry a roll with you, this would be it.