Editing 2474: First Time Since Early 2020

This is yet another comic part of the [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] on the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}.

Since vegetables are essential to a healthy diet, not eating a single vegetable in a whole year is not recommended.{{citation needed}} Anxiety due to the pandemic and disruption of social relations may have caused people to consume more junk food than usual.

Although some people, depending on where they live and their income, may not pay taxes in an immediately obvious way, there are some taxes, such as {{w|VAT}} in many countries and {{w|sales tax}} in the United States or Canada, which almost everyone would pay in the natural course of everyday life, though may not be 'obvious' in the paying, or even be extracted at source (withheld from payroll) in the simpler cases. (Randall lives in {{w|Massachusetts}}, which does not have a VAT, but does have a 6.25% sales tax.) It is therefore strange that someone could have gone a year without paying any taxes, implying they made almost no monetary transactions in the period, nor are made (directly) responsible for any residential or property-owning taxations that might otherwise be payable to one or other layer of government.

One of the main pieces of advice during the pandemic was to wash one's hands, frequently. Even in normal circumstances, washing hands is a good idea to remain hygienic,{{citation needed}} and not do so for a year would be disgusting to most people, and a good way of catching diseases.

Despite the restrictions, most people will have seen another person during the pandemic, virtually or otherwise.

The fact that the speaker apparently has seen a ghost, both now and presumably before early 2020 (else they would simply say it was the 'first time' they saw a ghost) is unusual.{{citation needed}}

Most people live on land,{{citation needed}} so sighting land should not be unusual, even during a pandemic. The fact that someone has gone over a year without sighting land suggests they have been lost at sea for the duration. There are several reported cases of ships' crews refused permission to disembark, due to local restrictions and/or because their scheduled relief were unable to embark, but the unluckily held-on persons forced to remain beyond their originally planned obligations should never have been left permanently beyond any tantalizingly unreachable view of the shore.

If someone has not checked the news since early 2020, they will likely be in for a shock upon checking. Noting that this could possibly (if increasingly absurdly) still apply to someone like [[Ponytail]] (as portrayed in strip [[2396: Wonder Woman 1984]]).

The implication is that the customers in question have been trapped in the escape room since early 2020. Most escape rooms are not equipped to support a person for that length of time, so unless the customers actually escaped, they would likely not have survived.{{citation needed}}

As a 'novel bat virus' is what kicked off the whole pandemic, contracting another one may send the whole world into a new pandemic, which is certainly alarming.{{Citation needed}}

Several [https://ask.metafilter.com/78414/The-Rotating-Prison-in-the-Mountain science fiction stories] include wheel-like prisons where people stay for years, but generally they are underground and horizontal rather than in the air and vertical like Ferris wheels are.