How to Contract Coronavirus and Spread It Quickly

If your life depends on dying from the coronavirus — yes, we live in strange times — here’s what you need to do. And we’ll also throw in some advice for those weirdos who aren’t content to merely fade into oblivion but for some reason need to spread the pain around.

First, we have to assume you don’t have any way to get into a jail, while simultaneously assuring that you can get out. Anyone can get into a jail; that’s easy.

Your next best option to contract the disease seems to be to perform intubations on COVID-19 patients while not wearing a personal air supply. We’ll assume that you can’t wait for 8 years of medical school and residency, so this option is out. And you’d have to take off your air supply when no one was looking.

So, we’re down to nursing homes. They’re harder to get into nowadays. In the olden days, you could just buy a “hand truck” and stack it with a few cases of soda, and pretty much walk by any security guard on earth. But times are tough, so you’re probably not going to get to the hot zone — the room where everyone eats together — very easily there either. Let’s move on.

What you’re looking for is any business that operates in a relatively confined space and where you’re face-to-face with other people for more than a few minutes at a time. And we’re not looking for just any “other people”; we want folks who themselves get up close and personal with dozens or hundreds of people per day. The more the murderer, I mean merrier. Hair cutters might be your number one best bet.

Second in line might be nail salons. A half-hour face-to-face, beautiful. Get a new color every day for a week, take two aspirin, and call me in the mourning.

Bank tellers are a little too far away and not long enough face time. Small retailers like gift shops, pet supplies, pizza take out… ditto.

Supermarkets? Eh. Not much lingering, ceilings are probably too tall. Damn bug gets dispersed too much too quick to concentrate on your sinuses.

Movie theaters. Do they still have those? Tough call, not too enclosed but same people upstream from ventilation for two hours straight. Now there’s a good suspense plot for you. Hard to say. You might have to go to ten movies. Do you really want to spend that sort of money? What if you feel guilty and have to buy popcorn. You’ll be bankrupt before you’re dead. Keep your eyes on the prize, dude.

Golf? Unless you can spend a lot of time in the locker room or sauna, don’t waste your time.

Team sports as a participant? Probably enough spit and steam being exchanged to kill us all, but not your most efficient option. You’d have to concentrate on locker room time and people would wonder why you can’t play the game for shit but you’re in the locker room all the time.

Now one last option to consider. What about licking every piece of mail that comes to your house? Really giving it a good tongue washing? Sorry, not buying it. I’m no public health genius but I’ll bet you’d have tongue burn before you found enough corona buggers to get a good infection going. Yes, it lasts up to 3 days on a perfect surface but they don’t know how many of the little devils it takes. And after 60,000 deaths we don’t have one case where we can suspect touch transmission. Of course it’s impossible to prove one way or another.

OK, so now let’s say you’re convinced you’ve exposed yourself so much that you must have it, and you’ve got ten different nail colors and your hair’s been cut so many times nothing’s left. How are you going to transmit this as widely as possible?

One option is basketball, hockey, and other indoor arena stuff. Your individual odds of contracting it there aren’t high but for spreading it, the thousands of people you’ll walk by on the way in is the key. It’s a good option. But there’s a better one.

One word: casino! People travel from far and wide and then go back home and spread it around there. If you can infect one “dealer” you’ve earned your stripes. And if you can manage to get to and from the casino on a bus or airplane, you’re golden. Or better yet, infect a dealer at a casino where the predominant access is by long-distance travel. That’s your winning hand, there.