On the lighter funny/silly side of things regarding Covid.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/wor...-sues-23122051

At Least Four Strains Of COVID-19 Were Found In Ravens Facility
https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/...ass-statement/

Hard heads
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/12...rrested-again/

Swedens experiment over
https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-a-...nt-11607261658

Denmark locking down
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...es/ar-BB1bGCD4

Add some more recent links to this thread.

The currently biggest Covid-related news items on my news feeds are conspiration myths, esp. wrt vaccination, and how to deal with these specifically & generally.
It's becoming a real problem when everybody & their paranoid uncle can become their own news channel with a laptop from their living room couch.

Further on the lighter/funnier side:

#Fauci 'weirded out' by people listening to him
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/boro...stening-to-him

#White House chief of staff quarintined after testing positive for honesty:
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/boro...ve-for-honesty

Theres some great satire sites, but Borowitz is probably best.

Of course, it is all about the money. Over here in the EU:

1. the largest diary firm is cutting jobs because of low demand.
2. Potatoe prices are very low.
3. Pig prices are 1/3 of what they were 1.5 years ago.
4. Chicken prices are at 2/3 to 1.5 years ago.

(source: https://www.nieuweoogst.nl/marktprijzen)

After the Brexit transition period stops end of the year and the effects kick in I expect UK food prices to soar because of a) lack of supply due to supply chain problems, and b) additional tariffs. That is what the UK wanted, after all..

Just the opposite here. We have a grocery store chain called Aldi in the US. Before all this started milk was selling for .99 to $1.09 a gallon. Eggs were sometimes .49 a dozen. Now milk is up to $1.90 a gallon and eggs are .89 or .99 a dozen.

I actually found chicken thighs for .49 a pound at Aldi this weekend. But, I think that was because they were just about past the sale date, and they were wanting to move them. I brought them home, unwrapped and smelled them, they weren't bad but you can tell when meat is getting close. I washed them and put them in the freezer. Usually thighs are as much as $1.89 a pound.

I see that external usb hard drives that could be had from NEgg for $48.00 and free shipping are now $58.00. And of course that varies.

I figured it was due to the normal laws of supply and demand. A slow down in manufacturing, when means higher prices, if the demands remains steady.

https://money.cnn.com/data/currencies/
https://x-rates.com/table/?from=USD&amount=1

So does most of Europe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi#Geographic_distribution

(Though interestingly, US is currently the only country outside its native Germany where both Aldi companies operate.)

^ The Albrecht brothers fell out and divided their chain into North and South, agreeing to disagree and not get in each others' way.
This division was later expanded on Europe.
According to the map here there should be only Aldi Süd in the USA, but according to the table left of it Aldi Nord is present as "Trader Joe's"... but I digress...

And as one scientist put it:
In other words: when they start claiming that there is no truth in mainstream media or politics because it's "all bought", and the only way to keep abreast of "The Truth" is to delve deep into the murkier corners of the internet (or murkier channels of YT) - stay clear!

That is to say, if there would be one single truth.

However there is light on the end of the tunnel. My brother lives in a town with a lot of those anti-vaxxers who believe that their bodies need to build up stamina against disease and washing hands would only weaken their immune system. When COVID-19 got here, that behavior suddenly stopped

I'm not sure which tabloid reported this... but let's be honest for a moment - this country (with a functioning welfare state safety net) has absolutely no concept of what a "galloping hunger crisis" is. Someone living in sub Saharan Africa or Peru (especially the "cerros" in Lima) to name just two of many examples, might be be able to provide some education on that.

It's funny how people look at the world, isn't it? An Arabic speaking friend once told me there's much lower depression in Syria - that every day above ground is a good day. Those problems will probably come later.

In the Australian state I live in there are currently no active covid cases in the state right now.

You're not required to wear a mask in public, and a lot of the restrictions have been eased or lifted altogether. The state government have introduced QR codes for several types of businesses, like pubs, restaurants, etc, and released an app for smartphones to scan the QR code with if go to a business that's required to have one (although the business can still give the pen and paper option for those that don't have a smartphone). Personally, I refuse to install state government sponsored spyware on my phone, nor would I install the dud of a tracking app the federal government has released.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure covid is real, but when a state doesn't have high rates of transmission and they can get your details from bank or credit cards you used to pay for whatever it was you bought, then it does get to the point of crossing the line of needlessly invading a person's privacy and violating their civil liberties unjustifiably. If there was high rates of transmission and/or you pay by cash then they might have a point, but if neither are true, then why should I give up my privacy and liberties. Particularly when I (as I did) go to KFC just to get my food and go, have to give my name and phone number, it's just total BS - I gave them a fake name instead, put a line through the phone number column and walked off. Screw em'

It's tricky. How do you balance liberty against public safety? In the UK during the war, people put up with a lot of restrictions on their freedom because they wanted England to win the war. After the war, those restrictions were lifted.

btw the official covid-tracing apps created by Apple and Google were carefully designed to preserve privacy because they knew perfectly well that people in free countries (i.e outside China) wouldn't use them otherwise. Phones exchange random codes by bluetooth and keep records of those they have sent out and those they have received, but no one can deduce anything about who sent them or where. It's the individual user who is responsible for uploading the codes his phone has sent out during the past week if (and only if) he gets diagnosed with covid. People who have any of those codes in their "received" list get a notification from their phone that they need to self-isolate. They don't need to tell anyone else, and no one can find out who the codes came from.

What struck me is that in 2001. 9/11 happened. 3000 Americans died. The 'war on terror' was the response and hundreds of thousand/millions died in something that dragged on for years. Millions, maybe billions were spent.

3000 people died yesterday in the States from Covid. Nobody seemed to bat an eyelid.

Trillions actually. At last count I thought that it was 3 Trillion dollars.

Isn't that something.

Because dying of covid is thought to be "just bad luck", like getting cancer.