Stories from the Bizarro World of Covid Hysteria

(Don Boudreaux)

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True story.

This morning I arrived in the lobby of an office building in Arlington, Virginia, to meet a friend with whom I had some business to conduct in one of that building’s upper floors. I arrived about ten minutes early. The only other person in the lobby was a woman sitting behind the reception desk.

When I began to seat myself in an open chair far from the reception desk but with a good view out of the window (the better to see when my friend was arriving), the woman behind the reception desk informed me in no uncertain terms “Sir, you’re not allowed to sit down.”

Startled, I asked, “Can I stand?”

In a tone noticeably friendlier than she used to keep me from becoming comfortably seated, she answered “Of course!”

I said nothing in reply other than “Thanks.” I dislike confrontation. Plus, this receptionist was likely simply doing as the building management instructed her. But I seethed inside at the situation’s stupidity.

I can stand in the lobby; doing so is apparently sufficiently safe. But I cannot sit in the lobby; doing so apparently will cause me to emit into the air lethal amounts of the coronavirus.

My friend was about five minutes late. So I stood in the lobby for about 15 minutes. Intentionally, I stood – unmolested and unremarked upon – immediately beside the chair whose comforts I was not permitted to enjoy.

Do people standing emit fewer amounts of the coronavirus than do people sitting?

Someone should collect into a book accounts of such Covid insanity. This book, were it to become a reality, would be many volumes.