Common Cocktail in the Crosshairs

If you’re in the state of Florida, I have news you can use. It turns out liquor stores and Dunkin’ Donuts are essential businesses. You may not be able to go to work and feed your family, but you can knock back all the gin you want. There is no shortage. And you can dunk crullers in it.

Speaking of gin, I bought some. I picked Boodle’s. I am just barely a drinker, but coronavirus drove me to the bottle. I kept reading stories about quinine-related medicines which are being used successfully to treat the disease. That got me thinking about quinine, and one thing led to another.

Quinine is an essential ingredient in tonic water, which is used to make gin and tonics.

For those who don’t know, here is the history of the gin and tonic, as I recall it from listening to unreliable gossip. The British conquered most of the world so they could do helpful things like growing opium in India and forcing China to let them sell it to addicts. A lot of the places the British conquered had mosquitoes and malaria. Quinine kills the malaria parasite, so British occupiers had to take it regularly. It tasted disgusting by itself, but some clever person–this is not a surprise, considering the fact that we’re talking about the British–decided to combine it with strong drink. Eventually, the concoction morphed into the concoction known as the gin and tonic, which Americans perfected by adding ice.

Some claim the gin was added to kill bacteria in third-world drinking water, but come on. We weren’t born yesterday.

Will tonic water give you a good dose of quinine that might help you avoid coronavirus? Yes. If you drink two liters a day. That’s what I read, anyway. Modern tonic water generally contains very little quinine. Two liters of gin and tonic per day may be business as usual for a British soldier, but it would be hard on most people.

I read that there are snobby brands of tonic water that contain a lot more quinine than, say, Canada Dry. Maybe you could get by with a pint a day. You’re not driving to work anyway, so why not?

I didn’t mean that.

Funny thing: tonic water seems to be disappearing from shelves. I went to the store yesterday and today. Yesterday, I could get anything I wanted. Today I couldn’t find the snobby stuff. I wanted to see what it was like. I’ve tried it before, but I forgot how it tasted.

There is a theory that quinine softens berserk immune responses like the one that kills coronavirus fatalities. Is it true? How would I know? Interesting, though.

In related news, locals are now hoarding inexpensive sugar. There must be a story out there that says it cures coronavirus. My local groceries are running out of store-brand sugar, but the expensive stuff, which is exactly the same, is still there.

Maybe the bag itself is the cure.

I got myself a new propane cooker. I had to order it because people hoarded them. Someone explain that. I bought a wimpy one a while back, and it had to be coaxed to do an acceptable job of frying steaks in butter. When I realized it was always going to be a challenge to use it, I decided to get a bigger one, but by then, half of the county had decided that propane cookers were the answer to respiratory disease.

The first one put out something like 50,000 BTU’s, if memory serves. The new one is over 200,000, I think. Anyway, it really pumps out the heat. Perfect steak, here I come.

I ordered it from Home Depot, and they shipped it to the store. Today I got a text telling me to get curbside service. I drove to Home Depot, and a guy in the wrong kind of mask came out and lobbed it into my hatch. On the sidewalk in front of the store, people were standing in line on marks six feet apart. They had to wait for the doorman to let them in. That was new. It used to be easier to get into Studio 54.

The epidemic appears to be dying out, so I hope the weirdness subsides soon. In the meantime, coronavirus has made shopping at Home Depot much easier. You sit in your car and make them do the work. It’s hard not to like that.

Guess I’ll have a steak and a G&T. Life could be worse.