New Brunswick — When it comes to Canada-wide competition in almost anything, the small Maritime province of New Brunswick is usually dead last. When it comes to flattening the curve on the spread of COVID-19, however, we’re number 1: and it feels so good!
“I’ve been training for this my entire life. I don’t work, I get fast-food delivered instead of going out, pretty much all winter I usually just sit on the couch watching TV,” said Lorne Phillips, 53, of Miramichi. “When they told us we needed to stay at home to save lives, I knew I could rise to the occasion.”
Premier Blaine Higgs has himself been hailed a hero for simply acting as he normally would.
“I didn’t even think about going to visit my 99-year-old mother this Easter weekend,” he told our reporter, unprompted. “Now, what did you want to talk about?”
When asked how the provincial economy will recover, Higgs said New Brunswick has to be last to be first.
“The steep unemployment rate was always part of my plan…playing the ‘long game’ if you will,” he explained. “Imagine if there had been jobs for everyone to go to when this outbreak started — we’d all be killed by COVID in no time!
“You folks should consider yourselves lucky that you have an experienced guy like myself at the helm and not some extroverted young keener like Brian Gallant. He would have probably opened a call centre and organized a pep rally and this province would have been worse off than even Quebec or Ontario. You can thank me later…from a safe distance!”
Officials at Public Health say that New Brunswickers are experts at staying inside, ordering large quantities of food, and not going to work.
“Life is pretty much the same for the average New Brunswicker: wake up at 10 a.m., eat a greasy brunch at home, stay in your pajamas all day and do nothing,” said communications officer Sandra Matthews. “So we’re basically just telling all New Brunswickers to keep on truckin’!”
Provinces with higher COVID-19 infection rates have been linked to healthy populations who enjoy activities such as sports, being outdoors and hosting social events. Many of them are now looking to New Brunswick as a model of how to be anti-social and content with inactivity.
“I recommend to any non-New Brunswickers that they definitely need to check out Tiger King on Netflix — there’s a solid day of binge-watching right there,” said Tom Crawford of Oromocto. “There’s also the old reliables like The Office, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, old Jeopardy episodes, I’m even about to start watching Survivor from the beginning until now. You know it’s still going on, right?”
Crawford typically puts off chores and tasks around the house that would require him to go to the store to buy tools, supplies or anything else. He also tries to avoid social engagements by not responding to texts and messages from friends until the day after he receives them.
“If you wait forever to respond to people, or stop responding entirely, it’s impossible for them to get you to agree to meet up somewhere. You have to resist the urge to be social and embrace a life of being a shut-in. It’s actually extremely relaxing, and you don’t have to wait until old age to do it.”
Public Health also revealed that New Brunswick isn’t seeing the disease being spread from other provinces because nobody ever wants to visit New Brunswick anyway.