No, April Fool kidding please, we’re not in the mood

Today is April for April and no doubt many of us woke up this morning hoping it would all turn out to be a bad joke. Maybe someone would come to our door and instead of PPE, wear a “I’m with the stupid” T-shirt and smile big and let us know that Donald Trump was right all along: the whole thing with the coronavirus was a big, fat Democratic fraud and we all succeeded in that. That the whole pandemic story was derived from some obscure novel by Dean Koontz (more specifically, 1981’s Eye of Darkness) and, as happened with that war of the Orsons Welles radio show Worlds, we’d all notice fiction for reality and slip into the Covid-19 layer .

“We’ve had you there for a while,” our smiling visitor would say. “You should have seen the look on your face.”

At first we will be a little angry that we were brought in, but we will see the funny side. “You pigs! You were wrong. I take the temperature 10 times a day and dose the multivitamins. I even filled my garage with rolls of toilet paper and paid 100 euros for a mask. “

Then we will wave our finger at the mockery of disapproval. “You ever fool me like that again and I’ll … I’ll …”

We will praise the Pranksters for their detailed planning and implementation. “How did you persuade all those world leaders? And how did they manage to keep a straight face?”

Eventually, we shrug and go back to our daily routine before the coronavirus as if nothing had happened – drop off the kids at school, board Dart and head to our big offices to continue our normal working lives. Later that evening, we would all meet in a crowded pub and apologize, how easy we were to catch up.

But this April 1st, we woke up to a reality that was not the least fun – although at my house we make the most of it and try to keep it as close as possible to a family adventure. But as we drag the kids away from Disney + (a great moment from Mouse’s house, not even a moment too soon), we cunningly check our news and watch the global case increase inexorably by one million marks and watch death rise geometrically, it’s harder to see the brighter side of this gloomy stories. So, it’s not surprising if no one is in the mood for an April joke.

This is a day when news organizations hire their funniest writers to make fake stories into which they are inserted into real stories to see if their eagle-eyed readers can spot the cheering. There will be a text about the new Brexit theme park in Birmingham or a tall tale about the Green Party trying to establish a coalition government with the Order of the Witches and the Druids. Somehow, though, I can’t imagine many of us today have an appetite for April Fool stories – it would leave just a little sour taste.

In addition, from “covidiots” cheerfully singing Sweet Caroline in a pub at Temple Bar while the rest of the country practiced social distance, to a gobshite who ran to Health Minister Simon Harris and coughed theatrically in the face and then returned laughing at an equally stupid friend, where, most likely, the two boasted as their other fat-faced girlfriends.

We had it here with horse donkeys who traveled to Cheltenham for the last hunary henry, hugging a tip for cancellation of mass gatherings and sick to the upper classes of Downing Street who seriously believed that herd immunity would magically materialize if enough people were infected. and that Dunkirk’s spirit and cheerful hockey sticks are the only weapons needed to fight this invisible enemy. When Boris Johnson tested positive for Covid-19 and his top medical advisers – along with his Machiavellian chief strategist Dominic Cummings – showed symptoms of the disease, it was tempting to think that their joke was happening, but really, none of us felt like he laughs gruffly.

And we’re sick to death of the greatest covidiote of them all, a fool on Capitol Hill who personally took a coronavirus, convinced that it exists only to thwart his bid for another four years in the White House. His narcissism and arrogance will cost many Americans a lifetime, as they have seen the largest number of infections in the United States and, in the worst way, have secured the highest number of deaths in the world.

Like St. Patrick’s Day, it’s probably better for our overall health – not to mention our sense of humor – if we cancel the First Fool’s Day this year. I love a good joke as much as the next person, but at this point, instead of laughing, I would be happy with lots of good reasons to smile. I’ll do it for now.