My fellow inebriates,

My local booze store has responded to the COVID-19 outbreak. In the interests of news/health literacy, my friend Scarybear and I are sharing our respective interpretations of the store’s announcement.

(In case you’ve forgotten who Scarybear is, he’s my apocalyptic housemate. He tends to focus on asteroids hits and gamma rays when he’s contemplating the End of All Things, but he also loves a good pandemic.)

 

They’re going to clean more frequently and disinfect customer-facing areas and equipment.

 

 

 

Good. I won’t get sticky when I shop there.

 

 

 

It’s too late. You humans are all going to get it. Luckily for us bears, we’re already riddled with germs. COVID-19 won’t make a dent.

 

 

 

They’re going to make their employees wash their hands more often.

 

 

 

 

Good. Although it feels like we all kind of knew about hand-washing already.

 

 

 

You have to recite the intro to Star Trek while you do it. That’s the ONLY way to ensure you wash for long enough.

 

 

 

They’re cancelling training and meetings for employees.

 

 

 

 

OMG. Much of their training is booze-tasting. That’s going to suck for them. This pandemic is making me feel… empathy.

 

 

 

They just don’t want them to talk to each other and figure out what’s really going on.

 

 

 

They’re going to make customers respect each other’s space.

 

 

 

 

But I like cuddling.

 

 

 

I like to eat people sometimes.

 

 

 

They’ll let customers wear masks in the store, but they might ask people to remove them if they’re checking ID.

 

 

 

Sounds fair. Gotta check for coronavirus-fearing teenagers.

 

 

And liquor store robbers. It’s the slippery slope to mass surveillance. That’s what happens when you manufacture something like COVID-19 in a lab and slip it to the public. Authoritarian regimes have a heyday. COVID-19 is mild, too, so you can consider it a dress rehearsal for the government-sponsored zombie apocalypse.

 

Scary had more to say, but I told him I was implementing a word count for this blog post. He said that was fine, I was lucky he even bothered, and that I’m an idiot. Then he went back to watching Alex Jones.