2437: Post-Vaccine Party
| Post-Vaccine Party |
![[Future update] Well, someone accidentally dropped an M&M in their cup of ice water, and we all panicked and scattered.](/wiki/index.php/File:post_vaccine_party.png) Title text: [Future update] Well, someone accidentally dropped an M&M in their cup of ice water, and we all panicked and scattered. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a POST-VACCINE PARTYGOER. Go into further details regarding individual elements of traditional parties vs. this party (maybe make a table?). Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
As more and more people are getting vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus, and as the CDC released guidelines suggesting vaccinated people can start gathering in larger groups, including some groups of unvaccinated people, there is increasing excitement about the possibility to resume get-togethers, and have a party. However, being very cautious, Randall is detailing the plans for his first "post-pandemic" party by cutting it down from the scope of a normal party. Some of the cut-downs may make sense from a health safety standpoint, others are less likely to be health-based and may be just to deliberately make the party boring, thus limiting attendance, with the effect of it being safer for the few who do come.
- Drinks
Instead of soda and various alcoholic beverages, he's opting for small glasses of water. Alcoholic beverages could encourage a lowering of inhibitions, help some participants to make bad social decisions, to the detriment of hygiene and reasonable social distancing. Soda would have less of that problem, though some might argue the sugar or caffeine might have some similar effect.
- Food
Instead of traditional party foods like pizza, nachos, and snacks, only three "candy" types of sweets and one cracker will be provided. Pizza could be a health issue as people reach into a common pizza box to grab their slice, and likewise snacks if they are in communal bowls. Another possible motive for such meager offerings are the concern that people may have gained weight due to a more sedentary lifestyles while staying home a lot more during the pandemic, so he didn't want them eating a lot of fattening snacks and drinks at his party.
- Entertainment
Instead of music and karaoke singing and watching sports, the only music allowed will be ambient music, such that is would be hardly noticable, and the only entertainment being displayed will be Bob Ross, who was famous for his very calm, low-key, painting lessons. Music, singing, and watching exciting sports games can cause a lot more movement and airborne particles with the potential of spreading the virus.
- Activities
Board games, video games, ping pong, and good conversation are already relatively low-key activities, but not low-key enough. The only two games allowed will be 3-card pickup (trimmed down from 52-card pickup, which would typically use a full deck of 52 cards), and a single video game, the ancient "Pong" game. Also, while conversation will be allowed, it will not be "good conversation", presumably preferring the conversation to be boring or uninteresting, or even repulsing. It might also be that Randall anticipates the pandemic will have worsened peoples' ability to converse normally, and so is saying that people won't be held to any 'standards' regarding the quality of their conversation.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
Drinks
Soda
Wine
Beer
Cocktails
[next to the list]
Small cups of ice water
Food
Pizza
Nachos
Various snacks
[Next to list]
Three M&Ms and a saltine per person
Entertainment
Music
[Next to list item]
(Ambient)
karaoke
Big screen TV
showing sports
[Below crossed-out side of list item]
Bob Ross
Activities
Board games
[Next to list item]
52 3-card pickup
Video Games
Ping (Pong)
[Parentheses around Pong added separately, plus an arrow pointing from Video Games to (Pong)]
good conversation
Caption:
We're planning our first post-vaccine party, but we want to start slow.
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I'm pretty sure the joke of the comic is about the excitement of the party, as people aren't used to exciting things such as good conversation anymore. If this is a post-vaccine party, there shouldn't be any worry about covid safety. 172.69.42.124 16:41, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
Okay, I started it. Join in and make it better! -boB (talk) 17:26, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- I thought that the party food and beverages were reduced to small cups of ice water and m&m as we gained weight over months of staying home. It looks like the list was made earlier in the pandemic when this was not a problem (yet). And now the list has changed since al lot of people gained weight. But pizzas and snack can contribute to the spread of the virus. For the rest I understand it like you N0lqu. mkljun 18:56, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Ping-pong should be a reasonably safe activity. A standard table is 9 feet long, so the players are forced to social distance. And unless you play at expert levels, it's not so energetic that you'll breathe heavily. Barmar (talk) 19:27, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- My employer padlocked the door to our ping-pong room because people apparently couldn't mask and play at the same time. 162.158.212.218 13:33, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
I think this is more about how exciting the party is than about COVID precautions. These are all toned-down versions of regular party stuff. 141.101.99.229 21:08, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Still missing an explanation regarding the crossing out of "Big screen" in front of "TV". A small TV would actually be counterproductive, as folks would need to crowd around it in order to see it well, thus reducing social distance. 162.158.75.140 21:37, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- Answer is in the comment above yours. No one has been to a party in a year, and the idea is to "start slow" and keep the party from being overwhelming to people who have been isolating for a long time. I don't get the title text, though... Orion205 (talk) 22:38, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
The COVID vaccine works by making your immune system kick in hard. At a panel presentation on COVID, a doctor was saying that fever, muscle aches, nausea, or other flu-like symptoms are to be expected after injections. It’s a good sign that the vaccine is working. The party list makes a little more sense if people were expected to be feeling mildly ill from the vaccine. —brad
I didn't initially read it as boring for the sake of safety, just boring because nobody has been to a party for a year and would find it harder to cope with the excitement. 141.101.107.166 09:08, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- This explains the title text, too. 141.101.98.174 20:55, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
I think the joke is that we are being told we can increase social activity but not to increase it "too much". So we could have a gathering but not as big a gathering as before. The reduction is supposed to be targeted to specific activities that might risk contagious spread. However, the joke is that the person planning this party is reducing activities just for the sake of "downsizing" the party whether the activities are related to contagious spread or not. For example, watching TV on a small screen versus a big screen. The title text furthers the joke, that we have been conditioned to be fearful of trivial encounters that do not increase contagious risk (like briefly passing someone outdoors who is not wearing a mask even if we have a mask on) so something as innocuous as dropping a candy in a glass of water caused a panic. Rtanenbaum (talk) 19:10, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- There are a few ways that could scare or upset people, from the similarity of dropping medicine in a cup of water, to the danger of getting splashed by someone elses cup of water and catching their contagion that way. 162.158.167.112 21:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Exactly my point. This is so unlikely to actually cause contagion that it should not cause the attendees to "panic and scatter". And that's the joke. Rtanenbaum (talk) 00:14, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
- The thing with Diet Coke and Mentos crossed my mind, since this incident does not involve Diet Coke and does not involve Mentos, but it easily COULD have. :-) [email protected] 162.158.159.108 22:36, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- I think this is missing the point. The point of this "cautious" party is not to reduce the risk of contagion (that is just a positive side effect) but just to get used to party again. The drop of the candy into the water causes no panic because it might be dangerous but because it is exciting (relatively speaking). With that explanation even the small TV makes sense. As already mentioned a smaller TV is bad in sense of preventing infection due to the need of being closer to it and as a result closer to others who also want to watch Bob Ross. But from a "entertainment value" or "excitement value" point of view a small TV is "safer" than a big one. So the point of this is not (primarily) to prevent contagion but just to getting used to being together in one (physical) room again. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 09:47, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Academic research on paint drying -- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160318090817.htm apparently it is exciting enough to be grant-funded.--162.158.75.80 01:39, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
This is a joke. It is funny. Haha. Laugh. Hilarious. 172.68.142.105 (talk) 09:06, 17 March 2021 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
The name of the 'candy'/sweet is contentious. The company conspicuously stylises as "m&m's", the Wikipedia page (perhaps influenced by technical limitations on starting with lowercase) uses "M&M's" and redirects all kinds of alternate versions to it. I abhor apostrophe-to-pluralise usage, myself, but in this situation it seems best to go with it. And what is "one of those m&m's"? Well, I went with "an m&m" but single-quoted (distinct from double-quoting, which to me indicates a literal quote. If we actually literally quote the comic/titletext from Randall, we'd actually have "M&Ms", maybe smallcaps or not, and then "an M&M" quite clearly capitalised (these would be my own choices, as it happens, if given a free hand), and I had considered summarising this all in a Trivia section to cover both 'official' and 'Randalised' usage before deciding to just note it all here. - But all this fuss was something lacking in my own childhood, as they didn't exist (we had Treets to "melt in your mouth, not in your hand", instead, which I avoided because I didn't/don't like peanuts and everybody else who like them went for the peanut ones that were virtually indistinguishable by the time I was presented with a bowl of them... not allergic to peanuts, just never really liked the flavour; and there were always Smarties as the far more popular multicoloured chocolate-only equivalent, anyway) until comparatively recently. ...so, anyway, consider this as being for the record, regarding one particular editing decision. Whatever anybody else might think/know about this issue and want to later revise once more. 172.70.162.208 22:45, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Transcript
I think this needs rework. Isn't the point (among some other things) of a transcript to "show" some visually impaired people what this is all about with the help of a screen reader? The current transcript doesn't seem to do that. I don't know HOW these exactly work, but I THINK the current transcript would lead to something like that: "<underlinded>Drinks; <striked through> Soda, Wine; <red> Small cups; <striked through> Beer; <red> of ice water [...]". Or am I wrong? Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 12:03, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
