Jokes about serious diseases and illnesses are not supposed to be funny or joked about. You people should know better...
Actually, Gallows Humor is an ingrained tradition throughout all of human history.
As Wikipedia says,
Black Comedy is "a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. ... Popular themes of the genre include death, crime, poverty, suicide, war, violence, discrimination, disease, racism, sexism, and human sexuality."
As the article points out, "Sigmund Freud, in his 1927 essay
Humour (
Der Humor), puts forth the following theory of black comedy: "The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure."
Or, to put that in the terms of the modern philosopher Modest Mouse:
"Bad news comes, don't you worry even when it lands
Good news will work it's way to all them plans
We both got fired on exactly the same day
Well, we'll float on, good news is on the way
And we'll all float on, ok
And we'll all float on, alright
Already, we'll all float on
Now don't you worry, we'll all float on
Alright, don't worry, even if things end up a bit too heavy
We'll all float on, alright
Alright, no, don't you worry, we'll all float on
Alright, all float on...."
Or to distill it even farther, one could simply state it as the proverb: "Laughter is the best medicine."
... except, of course, laughter is not actually the best medicine. The vaccinations are, in fact, the best medicine. But some people are too stupid to take the vaccine, and those same people are also probably too stupid to get jokes, so they will get neither kind of medicine (vaccines or laughter).
However, that just leaves the possibility for the rest of us to point and laugh at them for being so stupid, which means that the rest of us get
both kinds of the best medicine!
Isn't it great how that works out??