Art and Culture
COVID-19 Humor Is the Best Vaccine Against Depression
Humor is a coping mechanism and an important part of both mental and physical health and we need it now more than ever. And in honor of April Fool’s Day, celebrated in many places around the world, it is timely to seek to humor you.
What follows are a few of the millions of pictures, videos, good and bad puns that exist out there in the world. If you find them unsatisfying or there is TMI (“Too Much Information” in current parlance), do your own search—you probably have the time (!).
We may not have been shipwrecked and live on an island with no restaurant or bar services, but it sure feels that way!
The above cartoon is from the New Yorker published on 22 March but the caption is mine – the original caption was “I miss indoor living”, which of course, expresses an entirely different intention and kind of humor.
Other points to keep in mind (and to keep smiling):
- Quarantine affects everyone in the workforce but especially men: Men lose $1 for every $.79 women lose.
- With quarantine it is hard to end phone calls: “Okay, I have to run” just doesn’t work
- A very French concern:
This roughly translates to: “After two months without hairdressers, 99% of blond women will have disappeared from the face of the earth…”
- Dressing code for at-home living: From Jasmine Valickis, self-described on Twitter as “Queer Vancouver animator/designer”, this is her “work from home” outfit (picked out by Insider.com as one of the best “Coronavirus memes” ):
- Social life in the time of the COVID pandemic: Jazmine retweeted her friend’s summary record of her “social life” :
- Shopping sprees in pandemic times: The digital life is lived differently by husband and wife who don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye:
- Chauvinistic misunderstanding: How the French react to the news that arms sales have increased in America as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic:
Roughly translates: “The Americans, they are crazy!”
- Social Behavior and Work (on Zoom), among the gems:
- You never realized how anti-social you were until there was a pandemic and your life didn’t change that much.
- Yeah, I have plans tonight. I’ll probably hit the living room around 8 or 9.
- The diet problem never goes away: Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom:
As the above Instagram image shows, a good occasion to sell fashion should not be passed up.
- Ranting against teachers and distance learning: A mother talks to the teacher about her children: “They’re fine,” she reports. “They’re on their phones all day and they don’t stop eating!” Then the teacher asks her how the kids are feeling. The mother: “Ask me how I’m feeling! I’m falling apart!”
- The British solution to mask shortages:
- The non-human view on Safety Measures, Distancing and Masks:
- Pet jokes: For some still unexplained reason (but I hear it will be investigated soon by a team of humor experts), pets inspire numerous COVID-19 jokes. Among them:
- There’s this guy who reports that, after weeks of lockdown, he takes a walk in his neighborhood and comes across this guy who’s sitting in his garden and talking to his cat as if it were a human. So he runs home and tells his dog, and they both have a big laugh about it!
- The World Health Organization announced that dogs cannot contract COVID-19. Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released. To be clear, WHO let the dogs out.
- A Chinese dog deals with COVID-19 by helping his owner (this is one clever dog):
To conclude: Politics, people and pets remain the classic areas for humor – and there’s not enough space here to contain all the jokes. But perhaps the following could stand in for all the others:
- I never thought the comment “I wouldn’t touch them with a six-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are.
Richard Seifman - Board Member, United Nations Association-National Capital Area
