Since the COVID-19 outbreak, there haven’t been many changes in my lifestyle. Governments around the world told people to stay home, stop going out to potentially spread the virus. And as an introvert I just looked at the news and thought:
Hold on a sec. So there’s actually no difference and I’m now obligated to avoid social interaction?
So it doesn’t quite compute in my brain that people, especially in these times of crisis, would go out of their way to break a record for “the most people dressed as Smurfs”.
3,500 People Gathered In Landerneau, France, on 7 March 2020 Dressed As Smurfs
Just one day before the official ban of public gatherings of more than 1,000 people in France, the thousands of people made it just in time to break the record previously set in Lauchringen, Germany with 2,762 people.
But surely, the authorities would have tried to do something about it right? Nope.
The mayor of Landerneau told Agence France-Presse, “We must not stop living… it was the chance to say that we are alive.”
“We got our costumes from all the shops in the area and we figured that a bit of fun would do us all good at the moment.”
This gets even more insane when you hear the words of an attendant, which you can watch on this Twitter video:
VIDEO: Thousands gathered in France at the weekend to break the world record for the largest-ever gathering of Smurfs.
Around 3500 people set aside fears of the #coronavirus to dress up as the characters, which come from a Belgian comic franchise pic.twitter.com/G3tMFoTE6A
— AFP news agency (@AFP) March 9, 2020
“It was more important, the coronavirus is no big deal, it’s nothing.”
“There’s no risk — we’re Smurfs! Yes, we’re going to Smurferise the coronavirus!”
My mate, that doesn’t sound very good to me when you consider this: In the episode The Purple Smurfs they basically allowed a zombie apocalypse to happen because of their obliviousness.
In the episode, Handy Smurf carried an infected Smurf and gave it the opportunity to bite and infect him. And then Smurfs later captured an infected smurf to bring to Papa Smurf’s lab, but basically let themselves be infected and Papa Smurf was the only one smart enough to flee the scene.
Italy Not Happy
You’re probably wondering how France is able to stay relatively oblivious to COVID-19 when Italy is their neighbour.
I have to remind you that the case in Italy is bad enough that people are ordered to stay home and hospitals don’t have enough manpower that they are graduating medical students earlier.
Well, Italy sure ain’t happy about the gathering. The La Repubbblica newspaper called the rally “potentially a very dangeorus viral bomb,” and the Il Secolo XIX newspaper said the gathering was an “irresponsible move” that put people at heightened risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus.
To be slightly fair to the Smurfs, they did this event two weeks ago on 7 March 2020, when the situation is slightly less bad around the world. On 19 March 2020, the confirmed cases for France are nearly 10,000 with 264 deaths.
Two weeks ago, France had 1,200 confirmed cases and 21 deaths. Which doesn’t as bad in comparison until you also realise that they were fifth on the list of most affected countries back then.
Finally, can we also talk about how some of their paintings were clearly coming off?
We’re not exactly sure if the event was considered successful and entered the world record, or maybe some judge at the event said the cosplay wasn’t good enough. As of writing, the previous record of 2,762 people still holds it on the Guinness website.
