All right you guys, it took me ten weeks but I finally have the hottest, hippest COVID-19 take on this website, WHO’S READY

(No one is ready, but you’re getting this anyway)

Here we go:

Never mind the politicians or the epidemiologists: if you want to know how ready we are to reopen, the group to watch is the Pokémon GO community

Back when “meh whatever, it’s not even as bad as the flu”, Niantic was cancelling raids in Japan and South Korea. One by one, they removed incentives to get outdoors and play with others. They introduced remote raiding a few weeks ago. And they haven’t scaled ANY of this back

The mostly 20something men running the Discord groups temporarily muted the channels where people would arrange to meet for raids and community days. They reopened them when remote raiding was introduced & are KICKING PEOPLE OUT if they raid in person without socially distancing

Are we ready to eat in restaurants and to get haircuts and manicures? Folks, we’re not even ready to catch imaginary monsters in parks with our friends