People Made Jokes About ‘The Thing’ After News Broke That COVID-19 Had Reached An Antarctic Base

Vaccines for COVID-19 may have started hitting America this week, but there’s still a bumpy road ahead. Cases around the world continue to explode, and they’ll almost certainly get worse over the coming holidays. So what we need now is jokes. We need gallows humor. And we got it when we learned the scary news that the virus had finally made its way to Antarctica, meaning it’s now on every continent on the planet.

Previously the southern land was the only respite from the coronavirus pandemic — until 36 cases were suddenly reported at a Chilean research base. According to The Guardian, those infected were quickly escorted back to their native country, where they immediately went into isolation. It’s a reminder that nowhere is safe from COVID, not even remote research bases on the bottom of the planet, where conditions are not fit for man nor beast — nor, it was assumed, highly contagious viruses that have been spreading in congested cities and in places where masks and social distancing have been ignored.

But in these stressful times, it was also a time for dumb jokes. And a lot of people had the same one: An easily spreadable and fatal disease running amok amongst a tight-knit group of researchers in the Antarctic, causing widespread mistrust? That’s the plot of The Thing, John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of the ‘50s sci-fi/horror classic The Thing from Another World (which actually took place way up north, in the Arctic). And a lot of people immediately thought that even COVID is no match for Kurt Russell’s MacReady.

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Or maybe this one has a happy ending.

(Via ComicBook.com)