According to the Associated Press, brothels are closing in Europe, where sex “providers”  are legal,  because the demand is drying up because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Prostitution is illegal in the United States and semi-legal in Canada, but demand is drying up here, too.  And on both sides of the Pond, the “SPs” (Service Providers) are hurting.  Is this rational behaviour on the part of the clients?

The Demand for Sex Stalls

The demand for sex from Providers is clear.  You aren’t so much paying for sex, but so that you can ask for her to go away afterwards.  People who associate sex with emotional entanglements love the high-end escorts.  They’re always discrete, usually kind, and sometimes appealing. What’s not to like?  So the demand should flow like the Mississippi.

But, now, the demand is stuttering.  Is it because people fear “groups?”  Hey, there’s no group. There’s just the two of you in a Hilton.  You think the Providers might be “diseased?”  Come on!  In most of the industry, the Providers’ hygiene is impeccable.  That’s certainly true of the high end, and at the low end you probably won’t end up in bed with them.

Irrational Fear Response

So, shunning the industry is a kind of irrational fear response to the great imponderable: “am I going to get infected?”  The irrational responses to this are manifold.  People stockpile toilet paper.  Toilet paper!  If you wrap yourself in it, are you protected?  And there’s a guns-and-ammo-buying  spree currently in progress.  You need a ninth gun?  In the face of a viral epidemic?  This is irrational.

And so, you don’t dial up a Provider, either.  Ooh, la la.  Too scary.  Another of the many things about responses to this epidemic that makes no sense at all.