28 snack boxes later

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

TRINIDADIANS don’t realise it yet but they’re actually on the live set of the worst zombie movie they’ve ever seen. Even with the entire population of the world cast as extras, Trinidadians still want their doubles and KFC right firetrucking now!

People outside Trinidad simply don’t believe, when told, that, in Boissiere Village, there are motorists who deliberately drive the wrong way down a 300-metre stretch of one-way road. Non-Trinidadians can’t make sense of a sane driver choosing to risk life and limb and front bumpers and head-on collisions over driving a little bit out of their way.

We are never surprised by what, everywhere else in the world, would be astonishing.

We’re approaching the covid19 lockdown in the same way. And the world seems to be following our example.

Which we love: at last, we on the map! Fame, yes we’re famous as hell/Now Trini know what is bird flu conspiracy/Now Trini know what is SARS love.

There is no one who doesn’t know the virus is airborne.

We done know that!

But, standing in a line for an hour to buy bread on Sunday in Six Roads, Barbados – a far more orderly place than Trinidad – I could guarantee there was only one person, in a line of more than 50, who kept two metres away from anyone else for the whole time.

Me.

And people were laughing at me openly because, anytime anyone came anywhere near me, I skipped quickly away, which brought me closer to someone else, so I skipped away again, bringing me closer to another person, making me spin away from them, too. I was a firetrucking one-man square dance.

But I’m not coughing now.

Unlike half a dozen people who joined that line! And many more who left it.

Here’s how it works. (You already know.)

Medical people are dying more than anyone else because they are, all day long, breathing in the exhaled breath of people who have it. The more you breathe it in, the more likely you are to catch it, and, worse, the more likely it is that you will have overloaded on it.

Anyone you meet, anywhere, could have it, because 80 per cent of people with it are asymptomatic. The other 20 per cent of people who have it will become symptomatic. Of those, two to three per cent will die. Soon, it might be four per cent, and then five, or possibly nine and then 27 per cent. We don’t know how, or how far, or how quickly the virus can change.

But we do know that, if you get to stage two, you have a 50 per cent chance of dying. One in two.

If you’re not paranoid, you’re a firetrucking moron, like Trump.

So toss a coin with your life.

Because you have no idea if you already have it and are spreading it to everyone you meet. Or don’t have it yet, and will get it from someone else and become sick to some degree.

And you especially don’t know if you will be the one of the two who will surely die when they get to stage two.

If you’re a doctor, examine patients who may have it all day long and, if you’re in the wrong group, your number is up. If you’re a limer, play all-fours with three others for an afternoon and, if one of you sat down with it, all four of you will get up with it. Pass around a bowl of peanuts, a nip of puncheon or a joint and you are rapidly increasing your speed before you crash into a wall.

You will crash, for sure. But you can choose whether you hit the wall at almost a rolling speed. Or flat firetrucking out, pedal to the metal.

Stand in a line to buy bread – or doubles, or KFC, or phone cards – and spend the 90 minutes talking closely with three others, and, by the time you get your sandwich loaf, snack box or top-up, you will also have got covid19.

You’re in a firetrucking zombie movie, even if you don’t realise it yet.

And you don’t know how it ends.

So go through hard.

As they say. Right before they drive into Boissiere Village.

BC Pires is dodging coughs, not cars. Read the full version of this feature on Saturday at www.BCPires.com