The COVID-19 pandemic was a horrible and traumatic experience for (much of) the world. But throughout its awfulness, there were some hilarious moments - in a mindbogglingly stupid and reason-defying way. I’m reminded of these as I occasionally browse through the images saved on my phone or the memories that Facebook shows me. So I decided to put them together for kicks and giggles. They’re in chronological order, to the extent that I can reconstruct it.
The safety instructions in my condo lift in Bangkok looked like when you’ve been a naughty child and your mother punished you to stand in the corner.
The gays are always prepared to make the best of a bad situation. (Well, not really, but it’s a fun joke)
While everyone else got so worried about lockdowns that they started panic buying toilet paper, of all things (here, Tong and I are making fun of this).
But Eastern Orthodox Christians had nothing to worry about because you just can't catch COVID or other diseases in a church.
When The Guardian reported how the pandemic is affecting ... drug dealers and the drug market.
When people started having COVID-related sexual fantasies and asking sex workers to play them out…
… but in a way that was actually similar to what the health authorities were advising
When the air in extremely polluted cities became clean!
When Trump suggested injecting people with disinfectant to kill the virus…
… and The Guardian live blog quipped, “if you are not a stationary object and are, in fact, a person…” :D
When entering The Mall Tha Pra in Bangkok was like walking through the Stargate
When restaurants and food courts put separators in the middle of the tables…
… and all around them…
When the must-have accessories in the summer collection were a stylised facemask and a shield.
When normally bustling airports, like Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (first two) and Amsterdam Schiphol (second two) looked like ghost towns (photos from around 10 June 2020).
And smuggling facemasks out of the country was a pretty serious crime…
When an opera in Spain performed for plants…
When some people just wouldn’t wear their facemasks properly.
And others were just … totally of it and were coming up all sorts of arguments to avoid being bothered by the inconvenience of keeping themselves and others safe
The whole situation was kind of …
At least, as 2020 was wrapping up, we had some opportunities for lighthearted schadenfreude. Like when the Trump White House became a superspreader event. Or when a Hungarian homophobic politician was caught escaping from a gay chemsex orgy through the window of an apartment in Brussels.
Or when, on the next day, a naked man appeared in a Lithuanian homophobic politician’s Microsoft Teams window.
Apparently he didn’t follow the golden rules of online meetings
Speaking of online meetings, at some point in 2021, we were all like…
And fat…
Which was fine since Valentine's day was coming and the health authorities' advice was again to masturbate...
When the safety measures brought some people together…
... and some countries apart...
Source: “Stop
doing anal Covid tests on our citizens, Japan tells China”, The Guardian,
2 March 2021.
And Thailand made getting vaccinated a cutesy, fun thing to do…
