Q is for Quarantine: A Coronavirus Alphabet
It seems like economists have been arguing continuously for over two years now about whether there is or isn’t, will or won’t be, a recession. If my opinion counts for anything in the decision about having one or not, I’d like to vote for “isn’t” and “won’t be.”
Of course, national and global economies aside, many individuals certainly have had their own personal recessions due to the pandemic.
Q is for Quarantine: A Coronavirus Alphabet
Two weeks at home? No-contact delivery and pick-up? It was the golden glory days for introverts everywhere.
Also, a tiny bit of trivia: this contains a reference to one of the first Lab Mice art parodies, which will be re-drawn and posted in the next few months.
With this comic, you have to start from the bottom, and work your way up through hard work and a determination to succeed.
I’m ten letters away from completing Q is for Quarantine (of course, then comes putting everything together into an actual book), which has been two-and-a-half-years in the making. I started this project for myself, to keep myself amused while struggling with long covid in March 2020, and I’m finishing it for myself. I have so many projects from 2020 left undone, that finally completing one will be a relief, and a real accomplishment. But I also realize that its subject has long since turned it into a “pandemic souvenir” (yikes–what an idea!) rather than an observation of current events, and its completion is relevant only to me. Kindly, and unlike in the comic, no one has actually said this to me! Even if they had, I’m still having fun, and am happy to complete this project entirely for my own satisfaction. But I decided to put a sarcastic, pessimistic spin on the feeling, and created this demotivational poster-style comic.
Climb every mountain….
Q is for Quarantine: A Coronavirus Alphabet
…In more ways than one…
Q is for Quarantine: A Coronavirus Alphabet
It’s just possible that I was listening to “The Plagues” from The Prince of Egypt while working on this…and probably the rest of the soundtrack, too….
Q is for Quarantine: A Coronavirus Alphabet
You don’t say?
The news in spring 2020 was full of the scarcity of N95 masks, particularly for healthcare workers.
This collection is turning into a series of pandemic-themed parodies, it would seem.
The birth of a new fashion accessory…and for a while, hobbyist sewers had the runway all to themselves.
You can probably guess that “M” was a no-brainer.
I will say that drawing a mask on a mouse is a bit awkward–it ends up looking like a parachute.
This wasn’t part of the original alphabet I created in April 2020, because “long-haul covid” or “long covid” were terms only just coming into existence then–but it certainly deserves a place in this collection.
One of the things that stood out to me, once I discovered other covid long-haulers, was that we were all keeping count of the days we had been ill. I stopped counting days at 100, and started counting months…and now, years. It has indeed been a long road.
From Q is for Quarantine: A Coronavirus Alphabet.
While “J” and “K” were two of the hardest letters to think of words (or phrases) for, once I thought of “K”, I knew exactly what the cartoon would be…and it’s one of my favorites. I think it probably reflects times other than pandemics, too–like maybe summer vacation.
Lab Mice 