The internet has been soooooooo useful! You'll NEVER GUESS who has an idea to make it even better!

Cue cards and all, one of the great cinematic moments in a decade which included The Godfather and Clockwork Orange.

Some people are not taking Xi's disease seriously, and some are trying to help.

The "My Pillow Guy" that you ungrateful jerks are ranting about is named @realMikeLindell and he just re-tooled his company to provide 50K face masks per day while we get through a deadly global pandemic.

You don't need to thank him, but you could at least STFU about him.

https://twitter.com/LarryOConnor/status/1244740971235028993

I guess when you're locked in your house and all you have is social media, you eat lemons.

Not all masks are created equal.

The Dutch government has recalled over half a million face masks it imported from China after discovering that they were faulty.

The Netherlands said on Saturday that it had asked its hospitals to return around 600,000 face masks which health professionals are using to treat patients of the coronavirus.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coroanvirus-holland-recalls-over-half-a-million-masks-imported-from-china-2020-3?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

The ones who help are getting tested!

Seriousballs— "Testing" was a quickly-foaming obsession with the smart people in the media, so I got religion pretty early. My first presumption was that masks, gloves and sheltering in place would knock the thing back… But that was wrong. To control this thing to take "Xi's disease seriously," earnest authorities need to know where the hotspots are, and that means testing— Not just once, but repeatedly for as long as the pandemic continues.

Even Eli Lake, of all people, agrees that we might need a short-term regimen of movement tracking... But I don't know how we'd get that genie back in the bottle.

Especially when it's out already anyway. Everyone reading these words has assented to it for years.

• Here's the Lake piece.

• Problem solving.

• Another great moment.

• "Pandemic, babe... Could I get that to go? Thanks."

Spring time for introverts?

I am not usually one to see a glass as half full, especially when any idiot can see that it’s half empty, as it is right now. But the new quarantine regime that is forcing even the most outgoing person indoors does, to combine metaphors, gild the glass with a silver lining: It has relieved considerable pressure on the introvert community. The world has caught up with us at last.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/springtime-introverts/608770/

State's rights has her tits out; federalism's popping a righteous new chubby.

To control this thing to take "Xi's disease seriously," earnest authorities need to know where the hotspots are, and that means testing— Not just once, but repeatedly for as long as the pandemic continues.

That's true. You can't get your arms around a problem until it is well defined and properly measured. The new Abbott test in a box is very promising, instead of days or hours, it gives initial results in 5 minutes, and thorough results in 15.

What I haven't seen is how the material to test is gathered. Is it blood? spit? or the 3.5' probe up your nostril? I'm not thrilled about blood draws, but I can always look away.

And then there's the uncertainty around how much if any immunity one gains from having and recovering from Xi's disease? 100%? 50%?

One of the things outside of health care that will be broken by Xi's disease that we're going to have to expend time and effort to fix.

Over the weekend, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that “synagogues” and “churches” that disobey his order to remain shut down may be closed permanently as punishment. One can’t help but notice that the good mayor conspicuously omitted one type of worship facility from this dire warning. But whether mosques are exempt or not, the bigger issue is that Bill de Blasio certainly does not have the authority to permanently close places of worship as a punitive measure for defying his commands. He has the word “mayor” in front of his name, not “sultan” or “king” or “supreme leader.” And the First Amendment still exists, even if he’d prefer to pretend otherwise.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-politicians-are-seizing-virtually-unlimited-power-do-you-think-theyre-ever-going-to-relinquish-it

Daily reminder: the CCP is still asshole.

Dr. Ai Fen, director of emergency management at Wuhan Central Hospital and one of the first doctors to blow the whistle on the coronavirus epidemic at a time when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was desperate to conceal it, has reportedly vanished.

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/30/australian-report-wuhan-whistleblower-dr-ai-fen-has-disappeared/

> how much if any immunity one gains
> from having and recovering.

And for how long it lasts. Data still incoming, but for a least the last month and to date the answer seems to be 'months at most, re-infection possible thereafter.'

There's no glee in seeing so many people suffer… But these enormously safe and long-lived generations have encouraged smug and blithe disregard for fundamental biological nature. I've always despised people who decline to give blood because the 'don't like needles.' Well, bunny, get over it… The future is invasive.

I've also been wondering if the people who've resisted getting their kids immunized for whooping cough and measles (etc.) should be provided with any eventual Covid vaccine before those other innoculations have been completed.

I wonder what they mean by ventilators being "allowed to expire"? I presume that means they have to be maintained, or at least periodically examined for deterioration of "soft" parts.

In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the state would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a powerful set of medical weapons to deploy in the case of large-scale emergencies and natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and pandemics.

“In light of the pandemic flu risk, it is absolutely a critical investment,” he told a news conference. “I’m not willing to gamble with the people’s safety.”

The state, flush with tax revenue, soon sank more than $200 million into the mobile hospital program and a related Health Surge Capacity Initiative to stockpile medicines and medical gear for use in outbreaks of infectious disease, according to former emergency management officials and state budget records.

...

Much of the medical equipment — including the ventilators, critical life-saving tools that are in short supply in the current pandemic — was given to local hospitals and health agencies, former health officials said. But the equipment was donated without any funding to maintain them. The respirators were allowed to expire without being replaced.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus-california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators

That's crazy talk, FIRE.

The NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health ordered faculty doctors on Saturday not to speak with reporters about COVID-19 without express approval from the Office of Communications and Marketing. Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reminds the university that free speech and academic freedom do not become less important during a crisis, and that it’s critical that faculty members — many of them serving on the front lines of the pandemic — be able to share information with the broader public.

https://www.thefire.org/fire-to-nyu-medical-school-stop-muzzling-faculty-fighting-coronavirus/

If people in California don't have enough to be concerned about, Gov. Newsom has decided to put a little more into your anxiety bucket.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/31/coronavirus-jailbreak-california-gov-gavin-newsom-commutes-sentences-for-14-convicted-killers/

"But I don't know how we'd get that genie back in the bottle." ~Crid above

At this point it doesn't look like you do. So you just have to find some way to live with it.

I'm in your head now… And you need the discipline.

101 is more than you need to see. But a classmate did this with a nerf ball at a distance of 6 feet in 5th grade, and it was one of the abiding physics lessons of my life.

Biden Mystery Theater presents The Case of the Baskerville Tweets. They didn't bark, and were deleted forthwith.

It’s kind of strange that after Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault, his Senior Adviser, @SymoneDSanders went through and deleted all of her Tweets about Kavanaugh.

What happened here?

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1245002798418350081

I'm sure there's nothing to see.

More about immunity for Darth... More uncertainty, sadly.

(Sorry)

More about immunity for Darth... More uncertainty, sadly.

Watching Tom Nichols joining the insult parade is the cherry on top.

What have CNN and MSNBC done to save lives? “Lindell said it took MyPillow workers three days to turn over a 200,000-square-foot factory into a facility to produce the masks. They are currently making about 10,000 a day and aim to produce up to 50,000 a day.”

https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/03/theresistance-media-mocks-my-pillow-guy-whos-trying-to-save-lives-by-producing-masks-cnn-cuts-away/

So that's what people do with all that extra toilet paper:

https://twitter.com/aramelijah/status/1243550215401082885

Wondering why we all have stay-at-home orders?

You're welcome.

Quarantine-breakers have more fun:

Spring Breakers Arrange Scattered Corpses To Spell Out YOLO

Some helpful tips on cleaning your groceries as well as for grocery shopping itself.

The 2nd video is an important update to the 1st.

Public TIPS COVID-19

And, of course:

Corona Virus Daily Thread #33

Is a candidate with no history of sexual assault really too much to ask?

Too much to ask? Probably.

You have to remember 'believe all women' (no matter how improbable as long as it's against a Republican). So anyone can make a claim with no real evidence. On the flip side no such claims can be presented, so the bad actors don't get weeded out. Some of the behavior just becomes normative.

And that is how people like Trump get elected. No skeletons in his closet. The man practically takes them out, dresses them in drag, and goes clubbing.