Bogged down by COVID-borne toilet antics, time to shift to a novel global tissue culture

OWN up, if you have already built up a doomsday hoard worth a year’s supply of toilet rolls taking up your entire closet under the stairs?

This is no time to blush or be squeamish, since what happens down there; carries more than just sanitary repercussions elsewhere.

Blame it on the media perhaps, since the need to keep up interest in wall-to-wall COVID-19 coverage requires treating bathroom so routine but best kept hidden with grave concern, if not intimate, gory detail.

But when you do see grown men come to blows in an Italian supermarket – over the last pack-of-24, buy one, get one gratis offer for even the least popular brand of bog roll, you get an idea of how serious the run on toilet tissues has become.

But matters lavatorial affect women too – Saturday in a Sydney Supermarket produced a social media viral sensation where three vixens having a s(crap) over the last two packets of loo paper.

In Hong Kong, a pop-up supermarket in a neighbourhood notorious for triad activity lost a crate of toilet paper – to a knife-wielding duo hijacking the store’s early morning delivery.

The Italians may have been irate, the Oz maidens may foresee dysentery while Hong Kong was pure gangland heist.

Down south in Johor Bahru, residents bore the brunt of kiasu Singaporeans whose almighty one dollar is worth nearly five rolls of – Malaysian loo roll!

Shortly after the corona virus threat alert level in the republic was elevated to just one colour short of panic stations, hordes of Singaporeans rushed across the causeway to sweep JB’s supermarket shelves clean of – bum rolls!

When the going gets boggy, apparently the 'must have' booty many households cannot do without is toilet paper, for when the tummy turns runny.

So, must life stop with the last sliver of double-ply, recycled, yesterday’s newspaper?

For cultures supposedly less refined, the approach to toilet etiquette and washroom culture may not square with traditional concepts of hygiene, sensitivity nor decorum.

Let’s face it, the act of pooping and cleaning up after the deed is done is doubly stomach churning – before and after. It is like the act of letting go decibel-defying flatulence in the privacy of one’s own home thinking no one is within audible distance nor olfactory consideration.

But now is the time to lose some degree of toiletry inhibition as the world faces possible annihilation from the onslaught of COVID-19.

Now it is plain to see, all manner of germs and bacteria are transmitted from person to person greeting or acknowledging each other when we do shake hands.

But when we emerge from the smallest room in the house, how ready are we hygienically; to face the world?

Personally, the filthiest toilets are where a faucet is attached to a length of slimy rubber hose that is too short to reach one’s nether regions, much less at the spot where the sun never shines.

Interestingly, a religious decree from Turkey back in 2015 pronounced that the use of paper in cleansing rituals is permissible in Islam.

But we already have enough competition amongst the heathens. This edict will only add one billion more of the world’s population to the practice of dry `cleaning’.

The United Nations has enough on its hands trying to foster amity amongst competing faiths, and the World Health Organisation has plenty on its plate already.

So, in order to prevent insane (un)sanitary competition get in the way of the fight to rid the earth of this current corona menace, la vida aqua – as the Romans would say.