Laughter is the best medicine...

Except, of course, if you're sick. In that case, efficacious medicine would be infinitely preferable to laughter.

And, if you're not sick, an effective vaccine would do you far more good than even a hearty chuckle.

At the present time, however, we have neither a vaccine to prevent, nor medicine to treat COVID-19. We can merely laugh at our fears.

In this post, therefore, I've collected a number of posts that appeared on Facebook or that I shamelessly stole from others who were aggregating these gags for their own selfish purposes. I can't credit the original creators of this content because I don't know who they were.

But I do know that all of these made me smile. Perhaps some will make you smile as well.

Kind of funny, isn't it, how reality has a way of undermining expectations?

When the schools shut down, this one struck me as 100% true. But, then, my wife, and one of my sons, is a teacher.

But parents are nothing if not resilient...

Fortunately for the future of the world, teachers are not permitted to simply declare victory and retire.

Still, standards and fashions may of necessity be revised on account of the coronavirus shutdowns. Hopefully, however, not to this extent:

When the history of this unhappy time is written, academics will be puzzled by the fact that, to address the threat of a respiratory disease, American consumers hoarded toilet paper.

Yet this is what happened, and the Internet made fun of it accordingly:

We can all hope that this is not an accurate prediction of how a future monument to this time may look:

There are any number of TP-related jokes. Just this morning I saw this one online: Last night someone TPd my house -- and now it's worth $875,000.

I don't think this will work with TP...

...but I believe it is a proven method for starting a potato plant. My ancestors thrived on these... before the blight. If things don't get better soon, we may have to remember how they did it.

It's all too easy to get depressed, watching the news, and reading social media accounts. We are supposed to be hunkering down in our homes -- but first responders and medical personnel aren't allowed to shelter in place. They must brave the storm despite critical shortages of personal protective equipment. Some solutions to ease the PPE shortages will work much better than this, but none will be sillier:

Social distancing is nothing new to me. People have crossed the street to avoid me for years. But it can be hard to handle for some.

Newspaper horoscopes used to be prepared months in advance. If this had really been prepared some months ago, it would have been quite impressive:

Pets were overjoyed when the work from home orders came out.

But even for Man's Best Friend, too much of a good thing can become a problem....

There are very few places that we can go during the lockdown, and the grocery is one of them. This church sign offers shoppers a tip from the Old Testament that is very relevant.

Somebody else was channeling their inner Steven Wright when they posted this gem:

They said a mask and gloves were enough to go to the grocery store.

They lied. Everybody else had clothes on.

But even though the grocery store is a permitted destination, it is not necessarily a safe place to go. In fact, you are only as safe at the grocery as the store's least careful customer. That's why this one made me laugh so hard. That, and the fact that I am of a certain age and level of nerdiness:

I initially thought to close this collection with something snarky, like this:

But this seems more appropriate to the seriousness of the times:

If you're supposed to stay home, stay home. And if you can't stay home, because you are keeping the rest of us fed, or keeping us safe, God bless you. Either way, be well.