The Irony Of 2020’s Newest Quarter is Real

2020 has been a year, that's for sure, and it's all thanks to the pandemic. Do you remember when the public panic began and misinformation started to circulate at the beginning?

Claims circulated over the internet that coronavirus somehow originated with one woman eating something people are referring to as "bat soup." A video surfaced of a Chinese woman holding an entire bat with chopsticks, appearing to eat the "bat" in a soup. Twitter quickly began calling out Chinese eating habits as the cause of the outbreak.

Since then, this theory has been debunked and is false information - but as we get further into 2020, you can't help but laugh about it and that so many people believe that rumor to be true.

And that's what makes one of the newest additions to the 2020 United States Mint National Quarters program so interesting (and quite honestly, very funny.)

In 2010, the United States Mint began issuing 56 quarter-dollar coins featuring designs depicting national parks and other national sites as part of the United States Mint Beautiful Quarters Program. One of the additions for 2020 is representing American Samoa. It was released in February, and now Central New Yorkers are starting to see the product in person.

Jacey Pokorny of Stockbridge took to her Facebook page Monday after encountering the design for the first time. What's featured on the quarter? Two....bats.

This is definitely just a coincidence that bats are featured as part of the design in a year where bats were rumored to be the cause of it. There's actually a bunch of conspiracy theories about it, since this wasn't something they just threw together last minute.

According to the Mint, the design depicts a Samoan fruit bat mother hanging in a tree with her pup. The image "evokes the remarkable care and energy that this species puts into their offspring. The design is intended to promote awareness to the species’ threatened status due to habitat loss and commercial hunting."

The National Park of American Samoa is the only park in the United States that is home to the Samoan fruit bat.

We can't help but laugh about it, though. It's just all so ironic.