Paul Workman: Locked down in London, Day 17

An image of Queen Elizabeth II and quotes from her historic television broadcast commenting on the coronavirus pandemic are displayed on a big screen behind the Eros statue at Piccadilly Circus in London, England, onThursday, April 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

LONDON, U.K. — Hello and welcome to our poisoned world on Day 17 of enforced confinement in London, England. The morning sky was blue, the air fresh, if a little moist coming through my ninja-looking mask.

So, formalities over, let’s have a conversation about how to behave in the middle of a pandemic. I don’t mean sneezing into your sleeve, or giving the finger to a coughing, spitting, huffing, puffing jogger who sneaks up behind you.

I mean: stuff comes out of your mouth beyond germs, and maybe droplets of coronavirus.

Specifically, is it OK to laugh and crack jokes when so many people are falling sick and dying? Let’s call it survival humour, as opposed to gallows humour.

I’ve heard people talk about “fattening the curve.” OK, that’s funny. The kind of funny you could see Donald Trump posting on Twitter with a little LOL thumbs up. #lightenupamerica

There’s a story circulating about a young woman who wished her grandfather hadn’t joked so much about coronavirus, before he caught the virus and died. Not sure if it’s true. Sounds believable. #lightenupamerica

To breakfast talk then.

He: “We joke about death all the time. Why is this different?”

She: “We all need to laugh, I get that. But I think it’s wrong to joke about coronavirus.”

He: “Maybe we need something to take our minds off daily death tolls and stories of people suffering.”

She: “I just think it’s not right to make jokes when nurses and doctors are putting their lives on the line every day.”

Just the same, there’s a flood of humour out there, splattered all over the Internet. I hadn’t gone looking, until this morning when I Googled “coronavirus jokes,” sort of dreading what I might find.

There are memes and videos about hoarding toilet paper, living under lockdown, and a sick Boris Johnson -- which was OK, until he was admitted to intensive care, and that bit of disturbing news changed everything. Suddenly, “LOL Boris has a sniffle” was not so funny.

Comedy is a release from our shared misery, and this surely is the most miserable time any of us has ever endured. Plague jokes, and coughing gags are a defence against fear I guess, until they cross the line, and we all know when that happens.

A writer in the Atlantic recounted the story of a British comedian who started his latest stand-up routine with a coronavirus joke -- that was before live performances in front of an audience were banned.

“It’s great to see you’re prepared to gather in such large numbers at this stage of the apocalypse,” intoned the comic. At that moment, somebody in the audience appropriately started coughing. Not sure that works in today’s pandemic world with upwards of 90,000 deaths across the planet, and climbing rapidly.

It doesn’t feel right to pass on jokes and share little videos when the subject touches on real danger to real people -- when forced isolation is hurting many of the elderly and the sick, who can’t simply Zoom with their friends or click on Netflix.

Some of them may die alone. Don’t we all worry about that?

The projections out of Canada look frightening, as they do in this country. Justin Trudeau speaks of successive waves of coronavirus, keeping the country in partial lockdowns for months and months.

Which makes you wonder, when will it be OK to start laughing again?

For now, I guess there’s only one answer: Keep the joke to yourself.