Oh look, now Chase Strangio is just plain grooming kids.

The quarantined people of Italy are singing to each other from balconies or windows.

Tenor Maurizio Marchini did just this, taking to his balcony to serenade the rooftops of his hometown, Florence.

Marchini sings Puccini’s impassioned aria from his opera Turandot, ‘Nessun Dorma’, or ‘None shall sleep’. After the aria’s climax with a high B, Maurizio picks up his son and repeats the line Vincerò!, or ‘I will be victorious.’

At full from-the-rooftops volume, which makes the little guy try to cover his ears, but it’s great for the rest of us.

Pandemic? What pandemic?

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos…

When progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders say “now is the time for solidarity” amid the coronavirus outbreak, they likely do not mean that employees of Whole Foods—owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos—should be asked to give their own accrued paid sick days to their co-workers who have either contracted the deadly virus or been forced to take time out of work because of what is now a global pandemic.

But that is exactly what executives with the grocery chain are asking its employers to do, even though Bezos could effectively give them unlimited paid sick leave during the current national emergency without barely a scratch in his bank account.

In a letter sent to employees earlier this week, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey explained that one of the options available to workers was for them to “donate” their “paid time off” (pto) days to a pool that other workers could draw from.

In other words one of the options available to workers is to have fellow workers give up their pto. For the workers giving up the pto it’s not an option but a sacrifice.

Journalist Lauren Kaori Gurley, who broke the story with reporting for Motherboard, notes that “as a subsidiary of Amazon, the world’s biggest company, Whole Foods could easily afford to pay its hourly employees for sick days taken during the coronavirus outbreak without breaking the bank. Instead, the company has put the onus back on workers, and they’re not happy about it.”

In Mackey’s letter reviewed by Motherboard, the executive stated: “Team Members who have a medical emergency or death in their immediate family can receive donated PTO hours, not only from Team Members in their own location, but also from Team Members across the country.”

Though such labor practices are not unusual—with workers in various sectors and industries pooling accumulated sick leave for a colleague experiencing a long-term illness—doing so in the face of a global pandemic, in which all members of society are equally at heightened risk, the move was seen by critics as shortsighted, tone deaf, and cruel. The fabulous wealth of Bezos only increased the ire for many.

They’re just sore losers.

Meanwhile Devin Nunes is going on Fox News to tell people to go out and mingle with crowds.

Reuters has more:

Berlin is trying to stop Washington from persuading a German company seeking a coronavirus vaccine to move its research to the United States, prompting German politicians to insist no country should have a monopoly on any future vaccine.

Germany’s Health Ministry confirmed a report in newspaper Welt am Sonntag, which said President Donald Trump had offered funds to lure the company CureVac to the United States, and the German government was making counter-offers to tempt it to stay.

“The German government is very interested in ensuring that vaccines and active substances against the new coronavirus are also developed in Germany and Europe,” the newspaper quoted a Health Ministry official as saying. “In this regard, the government is in intensive exchange with the company CureVac.”

Contacted by Reuters, a spokeswoman for the German Health Ministry said: “We confirm the report in the Welt am Sonntag.”

The German government probably suspects, probably correctly, that if Trump did succeed in luring CureVac here he would surround it with marines and small nuclear weapons, and demand a hefty percentage of the sales.

Karl Lauterbach, a professor of health economics and epidemiology who is also a senior lawmaker with the Social Democrats, junior partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition, tweeted in reaction to the Welt am Sonntag report: “The exclusive sale of a possible vaccine to the USA must be prevented by all means. Capitalism has limits.”

Not in Trump world it doesn’t. Just think of all the billions he could make from a vaccine!

Trump has been trying to monopolize a COVID-19 vaccine.

The Trump administration has offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusive access to a Covid-19 vaccine, German media have reported.

As one might offer the officer in charge of the lifeboat “large sums of money” to push everyone but the briber and the briber’s friends over the side. If one were a festering piece of shit.

The German government is trying to fight off what it sees as an aggressive takeover bid by the US, the broadsheet Die Welt reports, citing German government circles. The US president had offered the Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac “large sums of money” to gain exclusive access to their work, wrote Die Welt.

According to an anonymous source quoted in the newspaper, Trump was doing everything to secure a vaccine against the coronavirus for the US, “but for the US only”.

The Guardian asked the German government for comment but

the German health ministry would only confirm the accuracy of the quotes attributed to one of its spokespersons in the article.

“The federal government is very interested in vaccines and antiviral agents against the novel coronavirus being developed in Germany and Europe,” the spokesperson quoted in the original article had said. “In this regard the government is in an intensive exchange with the company CureVac.”

The German health ministry spokesperson declined the opportunity to correct any inaccuracies in Die Welt’s account.

Which is a broad hint that there are no inaccuracies to correct.

H/t Omar

Of course they did.

After it was widely reported that Tom Hanks and his wife were able to simply walk into a clinic in Australia with the symptoms of a common cold and instantly get a coronavirus test – which was positive – Americans are beginning to ask out loud, “Why can’t we get tested?“

Because $$$, that’s why. Which is more important, people’s survival or more money for Trump and his goons?

Silly question.

According to President Obama‘s Ebola Czar (last night on Rachel Maddow‘s show), Ron Klain, Trump “privatized“ the testing here in the United States. Instead of taking the World Health Organization (WHO) test kits which are cheap and widely available all over the planet, and having them distributed across the country back in December, or January, or February when we knew this disease was spreading in the United States, Klain said that Trump has outsourced the testing to two big American companies, Quest and Labcorp. Trump’s head of HHS, Alex Azar, is the guy who doubled the price of insulin when he was CEO of Eli Lily company. Do he and Trump owns stock in these testing companies? Why are we refusing to accept the WHO test that the entire rest of the world is using?

Because there is money to be made. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with that.

Cool, this is helpful – the Surgeon General of the US tells us to stop bickering and focus on this health crisis problem.

Right, because we’re the ones who’ve been doing all that, as opposed to the bloated ignorant orange menace he works for.

If the results are positive are they going to tell us?

We can’t believe anything they say. We’re on our own.

The White House doctor also says Trump doesn’t need to quarantine…which is even more bonkers.

On Friday evening, Conley said the White House became aware that another individual who Trump had contact with had tested positive for coronavirus. That individual is Nestor Forster, Brazil’s chargé d’affaires in Washington, who tested positive on Friday, according to the Brazilian Embassy.

Conley said Trump had spent more time in closer proximity to Forster, but “all interactions occurred before any symptom onset.”

But the virus can be spread before symptom onset.

“These interactions would be categorized as LOW risk for transmission per CDC guidelines, and as such, there is no indication for home quarantine at this time,” Conley wrote.

Which, again, is exactly not the advice the CDC is giving the rest of us. On the contrary we’re being told to stay the fuck away from people.

Conley’s ruling for the President runs counter to actions some of Trump’s close allies in Congress have taken after interacting with people who tested positive for the coronavirus. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Reps. Doug Collins of Georgia, Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Matt Gaetz of Florida each put themselves into self-quarantine after interacting with someone at the Conservative Political Action Conference who tested positive for coronavirus.

But Trump is president so there’s a magic force-field around him that shields him from low-risk infection. Or something.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people who are 60 and older, such as the President, stay at home as much as possible. Trump has also ignored guidance from health officials to stop shaking hands.

…

Medical professionals and others on Friday questioned why Trump had not already been tested.

“It is really inconceivable that they haven’t been tested. I can tell you that the White House Medical Unit has a very proactive response to biohazard threats after 9/11,” said a source familiar with medical procedures at the White House.

A second doctor who advises and has advised the White House doctors for years told CNN, “Yes, they should absolutely get tested especially given their numerous and repeated exposures.”

Nothing hinky about this, not at all. Trump’s doctor says No Need For A Test, nosirree.

The president does not need to take a test to determine if he’s positive for coronavirus because two interactions he had with known patients were “low risk,” a White House doctor said in a memo released Friday.

That’s not a thing. Interactions with people known to have the virus are not “low risk.” That doctor must have a gun to his head.

Physician to the president, Sean P. Conley, argued that because Trump’s interaction was minimal, including a handshake, and because Wajngarten and another patient were not exhibiting symptoms at the time they socialized with the president, Trump’s unlikely to get the virus.

Funny because that’s absolutely not the advice they’re giving to all the rest of us.

“All interactions occurred before any symptom onset,” Conley wrote. “These interactions would be categorized as LOW risk for transmission per CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines, and as such, there is no indication for home quarantine at this time.”

I don’t think that’s true.

“Additionally, given the President himself is without symptoms, testing for COVID-19 is not currently indicated,” he wrote.

But people can be without symptoms for days before getting ill.

This is lying to us to help Trump lie to us, and it’s also undercutting all the government health advice we’ve been getting for the past couple of weeks. The CDC has not been telling us “Don’t worry if you’ve had contact with a person who tests positive for the virus, you’ll be fine, don’t do anything.”

The CDC has published reports recommending testing for those who have had “close contact with a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19” or have experienced “potential exposure through attendance at events or spending time in specific settings where COVID-19 cases have been reported.”

Like, for instance, Mar-a-Lago last weekend.

The White House physician detailed that Trump also shared a table last weekend at his resort with a person who later tested positive.

But hey, the table was 10 miles long and they were at opposite ends, right?

Because Saturday, and pandemic, and toilet paper is sold out everywhere, and Wegmans is promoting homeopathic “meds,” and the US president can’t read.

Children’s excellent fine not at all bonkers reasons for crying.

There are many more. I can’t read them all at once because my abs start to hurt.

The White House has a transcript of yesterday’s car crash in the rose garden, the one where Trump was unable to read a particular word in his prepared Remarks. Here is that passage:

To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort, today I am officially declaring a national emergency.  Two very big words.  The action I am taking will open up access to up to $50 billion of very importantly — very important and a large amount of money for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.

The glitch is clear but the transcript still tidies it up a little. How it actually went was:

of…very importantly…very important anttf…a very large amount…

Each ellipse is a pause where he struggles to figure out what to say when he can’t read the word and isn’t sure how to improvise. The transcript represents “very important anttf…a very large amount” as the smoother (but still incoherent) “very important and a very large amount” but it really was the first and not the second. It was an extraordinary breakdown of basic function.

I still want to know what the impossible word was.

He’s a virus bomb.

He fingered the microphone and put his lips up close. He shook hands with everyone he could. Donald Trump, who promised you’re going to win so much you’ll get sick of winning, might also just make you sick.

In the White House rose garden on Friday, the US president defied the advice of medical experts standing behind him and behaved like a one-man coronavirus cannon.

Reporters wanted to know whether this 73-year-old man with a [bad] diet – his former doctor reportedly hid cauliflower in his mashed potatoes – is putting himself and others at risk. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary tested positive for coronavirus days after taking part in meetings with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

And two more people who were at Mar-a-Lago have now tested positive.

Should Trump therefore self-isolate? “Well, I don’t know that I had exposure, but I don’t have any of the symptoms,” he replied. “And we do have a White House doctor and, I should say, many White House doctors, frankly. And I asked them that same question, and they said, ‘You don’t have any symptoms whatsoever.’ And we don’t want people without symptoms to go and do the test. The test is not insignificant.”

That’s completely wrong. People can transmit the virus days before they show any symptoms. That’s a major reason tests are urgent: so that people who don’t know they have the virus can quarantine.

He has to be lying about what the doctors told him.

When the celebrity businessman has his back to the wall, he calls for the cavalry of corporate America. At Friday’s press conference he rolled in business titans to save the day, treating them to plenty of handshakes and little social distancing.

I hope they’re sweating.

And then there’s Yamiche Alcindor’s question, and his rude and stupid and mendacious response.

He actually turns to Anthony Fauci to ask if he knows about this disbanding of the White House team responsible for dealing with epidemics.

But even worse…at 15 seconds he gets to a word he can’t read.

“Of…very importantlee…very important anttf…a very large amount…”

I’m wondering what the word was. Substantial? Significant? Unprecedented?

It’s pretty unprecedented having a presssident who can’t read “unprecedented” when he encounters it.

This happened.

Dear god. Suddenly we’re five years old, sitting on the tiny chairs.

Someone else has noticed the endless repetition of slogans in place of actual thought.

It sure is interesting how many apparently “progressive” men are ready to jump on any opportunity to harass, threaten and wish violence and death upon women when they are given permission to do it.

The same is true of the word “TERF” (“Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist”). On IWD it’s all over the place, reminding women that if they dare to question the rhetoric of trans activists then they’ll be branded with that modern equivalent of the scarlet letter and leftist men given the green light to hurl misogynistic abuse at them. Even women who subscribe to gender ideology are uncomfortable with this ( I know because I used to be one), but they don’t dare criticize it for fear of also being labeled a TERF and being subjected to the same treatment. This treatment punishes the non-compliant woman and serves as a warning to the women who witness it.

It does until the non-compliant women and the women witnessing their punishment just stop giving a shit what the goons shouting “TERF” say. Once you don’t give a shit you just don’t give a shit, so their shouting does nothing but underline what mindless bullying goons they are.

What this means is that people immersed in this particular culture find themselves focused on avoiding the treatment they often participate in dishing out to others, rather than any actual political analysis. Complex social and political issues are reduced to mantras, and whether someone is “good” or “bad” is determined by their willingness to affirm the mantras.

Emphasis mine. That. The mantras are so empty and so stupid, yet the repetition of them is treated as an argument-winner.

Trans activists will shout about “trans rights” as a kind of abstract concept without actually knowing anything about the specific laws and policies that are relevant, not understanding that “rights” are legally enshrined or they’re nothing. Often they can’t even tell you what “trans rights” actually are, other than the alleged “right” of trans people to have others share and participate in their self-perception.

Or, rather, to force others to share their self-perception.

The Glasgow Times reports:

A GLASGOW couple have expressed their shock over how they were treated in a Marks & Spencer store while buying a suit for a relative’s funeral.

Both men, who we are not naming, say they were subjected to inappropriate comments while trying on a pair of trousers in a changing room situated within the Glasgow Fort store earlier this month.

Sounds a bit weird, two people trying on one pair of trousers – is that what the inappropriate comments were about? Was someone explaining that a pair of trousers has room for only two legs, not four?

One of the men wanted to try on trousers to wear to his gran’s funeral and on approaching a fitting room, he was told by a member of the public that it was for women only to “try on bras”.

Ohhhhh I see. Sly of the reporter not to mention sooner that the changing room was a women’s changing room. Sooooo what were the men doing there then? Do they both claim to be women? Do they claim to be the kind of women who wear only one leg of a pair of trousers and share the pair with another woman of that kind?

A member of the M&S team then told him: “I can’t stop you from using it,” and he proceeded to try on the item with his partner.

That is, he continued to use the women’s changing room despite the objections of women who were there using the women’s changing rooms. A tad entitled are they?

While in the changing room, they heard the member of the public say, “I wouldn’t want to get my t**s out in front of other men.”

Tits. The word is tits. Skip the asterisks; we’re not children. And I too would not want to get my tits out in front of men in a Marks & Spencers, especially not the kind of man who ignores women’s objection to his presence in a woman’s changing room.

The couple complained to a manager instore who told them that she would reiterate to staff that fitting rooms were unisex. They also complained in writing to the store and are now looking to escalate their complaint further.

Because how dare women want to get away from men when they’re trying on clothes. How dare women resist men’s intrusions. How dare women not comply and bow and smile and obey.