Elections, notifications & demonstrations: It's still 2020
Held together by a piece of string
I hope everyone’s enjoying election night, and if you have your hopes up for whatever reason, remember: this is 2020. The great news is that the binary nature of the election result means that, statistically speaking, 2020 may have something good in store for the slight majority of us.
Melania was spotted voting, in person, without a mask on. Maybe because she has an army of clones that can replace her in case something goes wrong.
This has been a very eventful week so far. Two nights ago, I got a notification from Immuni, the app that tells you whether you’ve been in close proximity to someone who has tested positive for Covid. I got the notification about an exposure I had on the 24th of October, when we had gone to the middle of nowhere for the weekend, to escape Covid. Some quick math suggests that I received the notification 8 days after being exposed. The average Covid incubation period is 5-6 days. This only means two things: a) there’s an ever so minor delay in the testing and tracing process, and, b) we’re fucked.
In the meantime, the heart-warming demonstrations taking place across Europe seem to make a lot of sense, showing that people’s hearts are definitely in the right place: take away our grandmothers, and it’s ok, but take away our nightlife, and we will destroy you.
In Italy, the unrest is somewhat justified, as most shop and restaurant owners are still owed money by the government from the first lockdown. You know that friend from school that you know you should never lend anything to? The poor business owners waiting for the Italian government to give them some of their money reminds me of the time a classmate of mine drove into the back of my car, before he had a driving license. Of course, we agreed not to call the police, and he said his dad was going to get in touch to fix my car. Weeks passed, with his dad not getting in touch, nor picking up the phone when mine called him, while in the meantime I was driving around in my old Opel Kadett, with the boot (or trunk, for our American friends) tied together with a piece of string, to prevent it from flying open.
In fact, I think this is all of us right now, heading towards 2021. Driving around, like an old Opel Kadett, with our boot tied together with a piece of string, to prevent it from flying open.
