Coronavirus: The importance of laughter in time of pandemic

A pedestrian walks past the closed Laugh Factory comedy club in Los Angeles.

It can be the little things that knock you off your stride. I took a look at the government’s travel advisory website, Smart Traveller yesterday. The site features a map of the world with every single one of the other 194 nations bathed in red; crimson spots fleck the South Pacific and the Caribbean, great splotches of rouge on the other five continents, all no-go destinations.

The advice was succinct and unmistakable: “We now advise all Australians not to travel at this time.”

As of yesterday, the inverse is the case. No one can travel to Australia. Not for the foreseeable. Australian citizens who are overseas are being urged to return home on commercial flights as soon as possible. Those who do will go into 14-day self-isolation. Everyone else doesn’t get through the gate.

Australia is in lockdown. It is entirely sensible and predictable. But that image of a grey Australia in a sea of red says so much more. It speaks of economic calamity and human misery.

No go zones: The updated Smart Traveller map.

In seeing it, my first thought was I would like a serious word with the bloke who shagged that pangolin at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan back in November. Or was it October? It’s hard to tell because about the only reliable thing about Chinese COVID-19 data sets is their total unreliability.

The other thing that popped into my mind is that pangolins really know how to hold a grudge. Hell hath no fury like a pangolin ravaged.

In a textbook example of slamming the stable door shut after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’s mounts have bolted is the announcement in late February from the Chinese Central Government finally banning the sale of exotic animals of markets. This is terrific news if you’re thinking of the next zoonotic driven pandemic but not quite so comforting thinking about this one or even the one before that.

So often the victims of cheap-jack cartography, routinely dismissed as a jumped-up King Island, Tasmania has also pulled up the drawbridge. I guess the Tasmanian Government figured it was easier than expecting Tasmanians to wash their hands.

We are on our own.

Do we hunker down or bunker down? The word from the lexicographers is, grammatically speaking, we can do both and we probably should just to make sure.

I thought I might find some solace, some distraction from the pandemic when the AFL season kicked off last night at the MCG. The Tigers and the Blues faced off. It would be, I thought, a return to the mundane but it only served to add to their utter weirdness of the times we are living in.

A crowdless MCG, save a few coaching staff and security personnel whose job it was to grab the footies that bounced over the boundary line and into the cavernous stands, is a grim sight.

At first it felt like watching the Sheffield Shield and then ever more darkly it reminded me of when I played footy at a fairly lamentable D Grade Amateur level where the only sound that could be heard beside the odd thump of boot on ball was the gentle cadence of the coach screaming confusing instructions at me. Until last night I really thought I had suppressed those memories.

If I could make a suggestion to the AFL it would be to allow space behind the goals at each end for half a dozen family wagons where a few lucky punters can sound their car horns when a goal is kicked just to provide some much needed atmospherics.

The empty stadium for last night’s Round 1 match between Richmond and Carlton at the MCG.

I watched a one-hour news service from the US and another local one yesterday of the same duration. Wall to wall coronavirus on both counts. It’s inescapable because there is really nothing else happening.

But worse, there are no dogs doing the ironing moments at the conclusion of our news services to lighten the mood. News producers must regard things as too bleak presently for this sort of silliness. But in times of war, drought, famine and assorted sundry catastrophes it was the one thing we could rely on. “Many people have died, and thousands have been left homeless today but here’s a ten second grab of a cat who plays ping pong.”

It was something we could hang our hats on.

How long will it last? Well, going on the amount of toilet paper I saw in a trolley pushed around by a large human in a supermarket last week, at least until 2057 when he should be down to his last sheet of two ply. That is, if he makes it that long and personally, I hope he doesn’t.

The 16th Century humanist and satirist, Francois Rabelais said, “Pour ce que rire est le propre de l’homme.” This often gets translated into English in awkward ways but what it really means is that laughter is our saving grace even in the darkest of times.

I’m not an immunologist. I can’t tell you if it’s a good idea to keep the kids at school or send them home. I’m not a virologist. I have trouble looking down an optical microscope. If I saw an electron microscope, I could easily mistake it for a car part.

There’s nothing I can tell you that will provide any otherwise unreported perspective, no advice you won’t have already been offered. I figure about the only thing I can do is give you a laugh. And that is my promise. Two days a week, more if you want it.

Take care of yourselves and each other. Be kind. This is going to take a while.

Oh, and bring me the head of the bloke who shagged that pangolin.