The New Spanish Inquisition

As a new week begins, some Chinese virus notes:

~What can disease-riddled New York learn from Italy? Well, à propos the photo at right, how about hotter curfew enforcers? Jill Filipovic tweets:

I think I speak for all New Yorkers when I say, Spain, hi, can you deploy some of that in our direction? We will comply with your orders.

No disrespect, but I'm not sure figure-hugging plunging-cleavage uniforms would work with the one-man small-town police departments of my neck of the woods.

~There are now over 350,000 Politburo Pandemic cases in some 170 out of 200 countries. A week ago there were ten nations with over a thousand cases; today there are twenty-five. If you take the very woolly statistics seriously, New York City currently has the same rate of infection as Italy.

In Italy itself, infected doctors and nurses comprise eight per cent of new cases, and the hospitals are so overwhelmed that medical care is being denied to anyone over sixty. That's it: They don't ask you your symptoms or reach for the stethoscope; your date of birth determines whether you get in the door. A G7 health system is now a Great War triage field hospital.

We were told this disease only impacts old people, but "old people" seems to be getting defined down from nonagenarians and octogenarians rather rapidly. When a venerable celeb in great shape steps out on the tiles, the Fleet Street tabloids coo that seventy is the new thirty; the way thing are going in the hospitals, thirty will be the new seventy.

~Fortunately, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have a solution for the above. When it comes to the Coronavirus Bazillion Dollar Boondoggle Act, Congress remains deadloc... zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Bottom line: The Dems are insisting that Planned Parenthood supplemental abortion funding remains in the bill. At a time when Covid-19 is killing oldsters all over the map, we need to maintain demographic balance by killing even more babies.

In other political news, seven states have called off their presidential primary elections. That makes it increasingly unlikely that any Democrat candidate can rack up enough delegates to win the nomination before the convention in July. If there is a convention in July. Which I would doubt.

Biden has been trying to compensate for the death of the Democrat primary by issuing weird inert shadow broadcasts of Trump's daily pressers, as if he's the leader of a government in exile. Does anyone watch them? Does anyone care what he has to say?

~#MeFlu: In news from Harvey Weinstein's gaol cell, the fallen mogul has been stricken with Coronavirus, which suggests the Bureau of Prisons suicide-watch team is going for something subtler this time. In other Covid Celebrity of the Day news, Placido Domingo, who was himself recently #MeTooed, has also tested positive.

Still, I'm saddened to hear that Robin Hanbury-Tenison, the great explorer and president of the eerily apt Survival International, has joined their number. He was the first man to traverse the length of South America by river, spent a year and a half living with isolated tribes in the Brazilian rainforest, etc. Having survived all that and more, he then decided to visit France. His son writes:

He had just come back from skiing in France, and the government advice still said that the Alps were safe.

He and my mother had considered cancelling, but their insurance wouldn't have given them a refund. So they were careful to always wash their hands thoroughly and didn't go to any large gatherings. Besides, though he is 83 years old, he's the fittest man I know. We ran the London Marathon together for his 80th birthday, we ride horses across Bodmin Moor whenever the weather allows and he still beats me at tennis. He doesn't take any medication and has no existing health conditions.

But when he got back he developed a slight temperature and a dry persistent cough...

The doctor has told him he has a twenty per cent chance of survival.

~That's Russian TV hockey hostess Yulia Ushakova at left. She's currently getting slammed on the Internet for promoting Corona awareness by wearing surgical masks as a bikini, at a time when there are severe shortages thereof for medical staff - masks, that is, not bikinis.

It occurs to me Miss Ushakova may have accidentally offered a solution to the crisis, but the wrong way round. Instead of putting masks on breasts, why can't we put bras on mouths? Why can't Playtex and Hanes and the rest offer just to snip every brassière in two - and hey presto, two masks?

Just be careful to hoist the lingerie tightly to your jaw. Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.

~It was a busy weekend at SteynOnline. We started with a special all-infected edition of our Clubland Q&A in which I took questions from Steyn Club members live around the vast planet-wide Coronaland on various aspects of the virus and its long-term implications. You can listen to the full show here. Kathy Shaidle's Saturday movie date revisited The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and our Sunday song selection marked the passing of Kenny Rogers with "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town". Our marquee presentation was the newest entry in my series of Tales for Our Time - this tale being all too horribly timely, A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. Steyn Club members can hear me read Part One here and Part Two here. Part Three airs tonight. If you were too busy heading off the Charmin delivery truck at the pass this weekend, I hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.

Tales for Our Time and Clubland Q&A are made with the support of members of The Mark Steyn Club. For more on the Steyn Club, see here.