The planet has come to a standstill, with the government shutting everything from our schools and workplaces to our gyms and libraries. Want to destress with a facial or some retail therapy? You can’t, and you probably won’t be able to, freely, for a few months. Want to get some fresh air? You’d best hope that no one else has the same idea, otherwise you wear a mask and keep it brief.
Instead, you’re locked in your home, working and thinking about death, or worse, not working because the state shut down your job. We’ve made this calculated decision to plunge the global economy into a depression in the hopes of minimizing the human costs of the coronavirus, and yet the World Health Organization has the audacity to tell us off for indulging in a drink, or a few.
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Alcohol, a WHO official warned, is an “unhelpful coping strategy” for our global quarantine. President Trump and his all-but-certain 2020 foe, Joe Biden, likely concur. Due to family histories with substance abuse, neither has reportedly ever sipped a single alcoholic drink.
That’s a far cry from 2008, a contest starring the coke-snorting king of the “Choom Gang” and a guy who downed four shots of vodka in a single sitting opposite Hillary Clinton in Estonia.
Mitt Romney was another sober presidential hopeful, but one in a time that easily facilitated sobriety. The economy was in recovery, not the brink of a recession, and even if each half of the country hated the other as much as we do evidently now, we could at least unwind with a picnic and a friend, not panic-scrolling through Twitter in bed at 2 a.m.
Yes, we still have the internet, but we’re about to become too poor to shop online. That’s assuming that we’re willing to clog up shipping routes at the risk of inhibiting necessary medical deliveries. We don’t know the next text we’ll receive about friends losing their jobs, or worse, their lives. We have a president who could use a beer to calm down and a challenger who could use a shot as an eye-opener, but, again, they’re both teetotalers.
And yet, the WHO wishes to deny us even this.
In 1920, the average Frenchman drank 22.1 liters of pure alcohol per year. That’s approximately five bottles of wine per week, and that after they beat the Germans in World War I and kicked off the artistic glory of the annees folles. If that’s what they drank in celebration, I’m sure you don’t have to feel guilty indulging in a virtual happy hour for consolation.
Besides, the West has made tremendous strides in temperance. The average American older than 13 drinks a little more than a drink a day. If you find yourself coping with the news by getting a second round, you’ll probably be fine.
Trump, Biden, and Romney may all choose to survive this national nightmare sober, and we ought to be overwhelmingly supportive of those who choose to forgo booze, especially in these trying times. But, if you’re not one of them, don’t feel guilty. Drinks are good. Not much else is right now.
When all of this is over, whenever that may be, we can take a national cleanse, lose our quarantine 15, rejoin a gym, and start a liver detox. Until then, take your FaceTime call and connect, and don’t feel bad about grabbing your nice bottle of wine.
