Wouldn’t it be nice if governments were somehow able to pull a report of every moron, imbecile, idiot, and dunce who has been hoarding toilet paper in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak? Leaders could then distribute this information to hospitals, health services providers, and insurance companies to ensure that these people are put at the end of the line for any medical treatment they might need.

This ruse started through social media in Japan when some pranksters were able to convince people that the raw materials for surgical masks and toilet paper are the same, and that almost all of the toilet paper in Japan comes from China . This misinformation quickly spread from continent to continent which spurred armies of nimrods to stockpile all of the world’s toilet paper reserves. In fact, it happened so fast, that people outside of Japan didn’t even know why they were buying toilet paper: they just had a vague sense that it was somehow important.

First of all, toilet paper isn’t going to do jack shit to protect someone from a virus, and this should be immediately apparent to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. The only thing toilet paper is good for is wiping ass, and for blowing one’s nose when there isn’t a handkerchief or kleenex around. If a person can be convinced that toilet paper can protect someone from an viral outbreak, what else is he or she capable of believing? That rubbing a dead fish on one’s face will remove pimples and promote clear skin? That the more USB drives that are plugged in to a computer the faster it goes? That a weekly colonic with celery juice will add years to one’s life?

Secondly, if toilet paper were somehow a secret armor that protected against the coronavirus, why would a person need hundreds upon hundreds of rolls? Pretending for a moment that you are not a complete dolt, are you really that much more important than everyone else? You get to have all of the protection for yourself and other people get to go without? Fact is, you have a selfish, meaningless, half-baked existence, and your pneumonia-riddled dead body should be cremated in a pile of flaming Charmin.

This begs the question: in a time of crisis, why should rational people have to compete for the same resources and aid as irrational people? The former group will be more responsible and considerate, and will promote stability and reason in times of confusion and chaos; the latter group, however, can only react and contribute to the panic and misinformation around them. Yet, even in the world’s most advanced democracies, both camps are treated 100% equally.

This is essentially why I tend not to vote: the input of an informed and well-reasoned individual can be immediately canceled out by an impetuous one. I can spend 15-30 minutes or more per day staying on top of politics, assessing problems objectively, and yet somehow my input has the same validity as someone who signed up to vote at the last minute at a booth in a mall outside of Old Navy. This is completely fucked!

Hopefully in the coming decades, when there is another and possibly more serious outbreak, and when computer systems across industry and government are more thoroughly interconnected, we will be able to tell who all the self-serving fear-minded shitheads are by a fancy database query. Then, as they’re waiting at the back of the line for the treatment they desperately need, they can think really hard about why they don’t matter as much as everyone else.