Just got off an Easter Sunday Skype with my Mum and brother during which I had, if I do say so myself, two quite clever pandemic solutions, which I’m willing to share with the world for free.

The first idea was inspired by my Mum telling my brother and I that she wasn’t sleeping well and explaining the following dilemma: she usually doesn’t eat a lot of starch in the evening, because she thinks eating carbs at night causes her to put on weight. But, she also thinks that eating, say, potatoes at night helps her sleep better. So, what should she prioritize, she asked us, not gaining weight or sleeping well?

We both agreed that she should prioritize sleeping well.

I was intrigued by the idea of the sleep-inducing potato. Wouldn’t it be nice, I speculated, if there was a potato with really strong sleep-inducing effects, and we could all just eat them and wake up when the pandemic is over?

This idle speculation is what brought me to solution #1.

Sleeping Beauty

I remember hearing an epidemiologist or someone on the radio say something like, “if only we could just freeze everyone in place for 14 days, then we could eradicate the virus almost instantly.”

So my idea is, we engineer a potato (or another food stuff, but a potato seems like a good candidate) that has very strong sedative, indeed, Sleeping Beauty-like effects. In the right dose, it can induce instantly, a hibernation-like slumber for a prescribed number of days. Everyone eats the potato, wakes up 14 days later, and we’re done.

Idea #2  was inspired by my brother observing that every country was implementing COVID-19 testing in its own way. What we need, I said, is some kind of global task force.

The Avengers

What we really need right now, that is to say, is a team of superhumans who will work together to save humanity, using whatever resources (including magic and alien assistance) they have at their disposal. The problem, my brother observed, with a team of superheroes, is always oversight; who supervises the superheroes? I don’t have an answer to that, but I still it might be worth, while we’re genetically engineering the Sleeping Beauty potato, to also work on creating some superhumans. We can work on developing the oversight mechanism while they are honing their powers.