Infantile Excretion Virus
By: Mark Farrar
Tags: Toilet Paper, Humour, Parody, Virus, Diapers

It was a dark day for humans when the arrival of the Infantile Excretion Virus exploded onto the scene, seemingly out of nowhere.

It only affected people who were five years or older, and the effects of this virus were shocking to those who didn’t know they’d been infected — just like newborns, they found themselves urinating and defecating with no warning and a total inability to control themselves.

This obviously led to some extremely embarrassing situations, with people everywhere suddenly having to stop what they were doing and find the nearest bathroom.

Unsurprisingly, there was an immediate shortage of toilet paper, and it was becoming more and more difficult to find a restroom too.

It wasn’t long before the conspiracy theorists were coming up with all sorts of bizarre ideas.

The first one to hit the news was the concept that the virus had been created in a laboratory that was funded by manufacturers of diapers.

Because, it could not be denied, it was soon impossible to find child or adult diapers anywhere — people had been panic buying from the moment they first heard about this new virus, whether they were affected by it or not, and that meant those who really needed them had to come up with creative solutions of their own. Let’s just say that the people who had hoarded plastic carrier bags for years had an advantage here.

And then, people started wondering whether this was a plan by the government to make people stay at home, because at least there, you could find a bathroom with minimal queues.

The seriousness of this virus was directly proportional to the number of people in your house and the number of bathrooms, which is why those who were wealthy were less inconvenienced by the virus.

Scientists got to work immediately, trying to discover where the virus had come from, what were the early symptoms (if any), and how to treat it.

Some people thought the virus had transferred from an animal, but there was no animal known to suffer from this particular problem — not even the chimpanzees who seemed to love throwing their poop around.

As for symptoms, there were none — until it was too late.

It was suspected some people may be asymptomatic, but it was difficult to prove without a reliable test.

Some of the more cynical people suggested that the one test that was available was rigged to show a particularly high number of false positives, purely to try to increase sales of the hard-to-obtain toilet paper and diapers.

Others poo-pooed that idea, saying the conspiracy nuts must, as usual, be crazy.

Another group of scientists were trying all sorts of existing drugs to see if anything worked, but the only thing they found, ironically, was a laxative.

Finding volunteers to test that out was, not surprisingly, somewhat difficult, but a few brave volunteers stepped forward and went to a special building where the facilities would be available to see if the drug did work as claimed. Truth be told, the “special building” was actually a public toilet that the government scientists had commandeered.

Next, there was a hunt for a vaccine, to try to prevent people from becoming infected.

There was one promising vaccine being tested. On the plus side, it did seem to prevent the Infantile Excretion Virus from infecting people and causing symptoms — but on the down side, some of the volunteers did experience a side-effect whereby they suffered from incontinence and diarrhoea.

The streets were empty in no time — nobody wanted to risk getting caught short outdoors, and that was a good thing for the environment.

Cars were rarely seen on the roads, and one unexpected effect of the virus was that sales of camper vans and RVs increased — because they came with a built-in toilet.

You could see these all over the place, especially on the motorways where people would stop suddenly on the hard shoulder for a quick one.

The country was in chaos — manufacturing, such as it was, had more or less ceased and most stores were empty, but the good news was that the House Of Commons was vacant too. It was the first time in centuries that the place hadn’t been full of shit.

It was all over the mainstream media, who were working the people up into a frenzy over the virus, but it was only on the “alternative” media that the real information was slowly coming to light.

Surprising everybody except those who understood about the human body and real health, it transpired that there was a very simple and cheap cure for this virus — kale smoothies and vegan cheese.

And, of course, the media ridiculed that solution, because they got a significant percentage of their revenue from advertisements placed by the diaper and toilet paper companies.

Meanwhile, those who were employed at sewage works and land-fill sites were deemed “essential”, while environmentalists were concerned about the effects of this sudden rise in bodily waste that existing facilities could barely contain and process.

There was one woman, who was not in any way a doctor or scientist, who had tried to force a global solution on everybody. Her name was Gill Bates and she ran the world’s largest pre-packed burrito company.

However, the public slowly turned against her when the health nuts managed to find proof that her burritos contained indigestible nano-trackers in them.

And then, a miracle happened — by December, the virus had mysteriously vanished. Some called it a miraculous flush in the pan, while others claimed it had disappeared because the turd immunity threshold had been reached.