UNDER COVID, PT. 24: DRINK, DRIVE AND GAMBLE

The last one standing.

As COVID numbers continue to drop, more signs of life are appearing in New York. As such, the much-heralded 7:00 p.m. round of applause for front line workers has gone from a wild ten minutes to an "oh yeah, I forgot" two. 

Well, we've only ourselves to blame. We stayed home. Wore masks when we had to venture outside. Stayed six feet from each other. 

How 'bout that. All that socialistic-nazism-phony virus-deep state hoax-over-reacting worked. Why didn't anybody tell us?

Great, we're becoming New Orleans. Next thing you know, we're going
to be burying people above ground.

Yes, like the rest of the world, New Yorkers want nothing more than for things to bear a passing resemblance to normality. Bars that serve food have gotten around the lockdown law by serving food and drinks curbside. 

The photo to the left shows a crowd outside a bar on 2nd Avenue and 84th Street, a few blocks from where I live. My neighbors are openly flouting at least two laws: drinking in public and social distancing. Mayor de Blasio is having none of it, promising that police will shut bars down if social distancing laws aren't obeyed. 

Someone should tell Hizzoner that nobody wants to hear what he has to say. Our local network affiliate finally got the hint when, as of yesterday, it stopped interrupting CBS Sunday Morning for his droning COVID update, moving him to its streaming news channel. And it took only four weeks of complaints! 

By now, the signing translator has given up.

Now Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, knows how to give the people what they want. And on yesterday's episode of Q-Tip Q & A, Cuomo really went to the mat by getting a COVID-19 swab test live.

Cuomo submitted to this potentially-humiliating event in order to prove to doubters how easy and safe it was. Perhaps he was thinking of New York Mayor William O'Dwyer who, in 1947, received a smallpox vaccination for the very same reason. 

But you can't tell me there isn't a major visual difference between getting a two-second shot in the arm and having someone dressed in a hazmat outfit shoving a cotton swab up half way to your brain through a nostril. I predict it will be the most republished image of the Cuomo years; one that he will secretly regret for the rest of his life -- if only because his brother Chris will remind him how stupid he looked. Mr. Tough Guy too afraid to watch? Had to close his eyes like a little girl? And he'll do that the next time he interviews him on CNN. 

Hey Jan -- shelter this in place.

Speaking of TV, I'm still wildly entertained by the number of ways advertisers are cashing in on a pandemic that has killed almost 90,000 Americans. Just two weeks after the lockdown went into effect, the once enthusiastic, now empathetic Jan from Toyota told the newly-unemployed that they could buy a brand new Camry and put off their first payment for three months.  

Wow, there's a deal. Let me know what happens when the jobs don't come back.

$25 that you'll lose within the first two hands of
Three Card Rummy.

But how about if you really don't want the repo man to swing by at the end of August? Not a problem! New Jersey's online virtual casinos take up half the advertising time on the morning news. Need money? seems to be the message. Gamble what little you have left! 

Last service area for gamblers when they finally
blow their brains out.

The catch -- aside from the obvious -- is that you need to be in New Jersey to play. Not live there. Just be there. So drive your brand new, unpaid-for Camry across the George Washington Bridge and pull into the Vince Lombardi rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike. 

Whip out that iPhone, affirm that you're 21 years of age, and in no time you're taking a loan on your American Express card because, as with Trump, you've just got this hunch that your bad luck will just disappear. Watch for the special Christmas editions of these commercials when the second round of COVID starts in six months. 

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