It is not easy to spell, but it appears to fit the moods of the nation at the moment.
#Coronapocalypse is leading the national trends on Twitter, besting even #Friday13 as the favorite social media reference of the day.
The hashtag is currently accompanying countless humorous tweets of how the public plans to spend their virus confinement time — or ways to stifle a cough or a sneeze in public. Some tweets complain about things like panic buying and the lack of toilet paper, accompanied by images of empty store shelves.
Still more tweets reference dream travel destinations or include images of planet Earth swathed in a facemask.
The New York Post offered its own version featuring an image of “Friday the 13th” scary guy Freddy Krueger carrying an axe, and the message “How I’m leaving my house amid the “Coronapocalypse on Friday the 13th.
And of course there is the political dynamic. Dozens of tweets featuring #Coronapocalypse are also using it to praise Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” proposal, claiming that the wildly expensive health care program would have curbed the spread of the disease.
But #Coronapocalypse did not spring out of thin air. It apparently first showed up in connection with the now-declared pandemic in a Jan. 15 in a tweet which noted the outbreak of the illness in China. The very first instance of #coronapocalypse on Twitter appeared on July 30, 2015, but that was in a tweet with a photo of the Mexican beer.
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.