Irony of scarcity

(Patients with different epidemic diseases are being treated together at the St. Sebastian hospital.)
Plague: “Well, goodbye! It doesn’t matter if you die from large pox or small ones!
Typhus: “The same, I say! It all comes down to cooling the roof of the mouth!”
Smallpox: “Very well! It’s the press that got their berries back in the basket!” (Better idiom needed!)
“Let’s go! Let’s dance the cake-walk of mixing!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908)