Laughter has been banned indefinitely during the pandemic, by order of all but a few hold-out governors, on the unanimous recommendation of health experts.
Many people, however, found it challenging to abide by the rules early in the crisis, when libertarian Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky announced that he had caught coronavirus (or, more precisely, that coronavirus had caught him). They had to conceal their amusement by directing laughter and potential airborne germs into bent elbows.
What kind of sick person is entertained by the sickness of another person?
Well, the kind of person who enjoys discovering new evidence that the Political Gods have a sense of humor. Just as there are famously no atheists in a foxhole, it would seem that there are few small-government libertarians in the midst of a pandemic.
Paul himself was out of the Senate in quarantine, so he was spared the indignity a few days later of joining a 96 to zero vote of his colleagues (including many self-described fiscal conservatives) in passing a two-trillion dollar emergency coronavirus recovery bill, which it is now clear is only a down payment on the eventual cost of federal efforts to protect the country from economic catastrophe after a nationwide shutdown. Ideology, it seems, has been suspended; everyone is counting on Big Government now.
Now that Paul has recovered—he says he felt fine and symptom-free the whole time—it is a good time to ask: Are we sure that the pandemic joke will ultimately be on him?
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Scolding, meanwhile, brings us back to Rand Paul and his not especially nasty case of Covid-19. Laughter may be forbidden in the pandemic but finger-wagging is encouraged, so long as done from a distance of six feet or more. Paul was excoriated by many for working out at the Senate gym while awaiting his coronavirus test results.
He responded that he only took a test out of an abundance of caution on his own initiative, not because he was feeling symptoms or required by official guidelines. Maybe so, but the consensus was clear: shame on him.
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