A gathering of some 10,000 people — standing 10 feet away from each other, decked out in gloves and masks — yesterday demanded that draconian laws be enforced to tackle the growing virus outbreak.
“I read an article a few days ago which explained how during the plague even the most liberal countries had laws which even forced authorities to shut the sick in their homes for six weeks,” one of the gatherers said. As they were wearing masks, this correspondent could not ask many questions. Who wears masks, if not the infected?
Others who had gathered echoed similar views.
“We need to all be put in a database and all our movements have to be tracked. This is no time to care about privacy and human rights,” another participant said.
Pointing to the crowd, another participant highlighted how counterproductive the entire gathering exercise was. “We shouldn’t even be here. But my son really wanted to be a revolutionary so I had to chaperone him here.” We are using his quote to fill my word count quota.
“We need an act like that. Stop asking why all the construction work is still going on amid all this crisis. Construction workers have inhaled so much dust and stuff, they are immune to the virus. Its science. Look it up, stupid,” one of those who had joined said.
Following the gathering, the country’s absolute ruler made an amazing address to the people, where they spoke about absolutely nothing important but congratulated the people for being citizens of the country.
They also said, for the first time in the ruler’s history, that they had heard the people and would put in place really draconian laws. When asked whether measures would be enacted to prevent criticism of the government, they laughed and said that had been in place for a very long time and whether everyone in the country had been sleeping all this time.
Asked about whether people would be forcefully quarantined, the ruler said, with a glint in their eye, that quarantine was now called “picked up for interrogation”.
“With the courts closed, where are they going to run to?” they said with a smile in their eye and a song in their heart.
“I understand that some people are concerned. But we must not panic. We must deal with the situation calmly. Call the hotline. Stay at home. Stay out of our way. Just stop buying all the potatoes. What are you even going to do with those anyway.”
While the address was going well, when the ruler asked people to stop spitting on the roads, another mass protest broke out.
And so it began. And so it ended.
