My software company can help you add music or sound effects to your voice calls, and that’s proven to be very popular in the past 11 months. However, to really want to liven up your next Zoom meeting, why not get a goat?

A farmer who was half kidding when she suggested hiring out her goats out for Zoom meetings during lockdown has said making £50,000 shows it was no joke.

The future is so goddamned weird.

Previously in COVID-19 Goats: Free Goat Entertainment

For many months now, friend-of-the-site Amy Jane Gruber and I have had a little game going, wherein we try to come up with the dumbest ways someone could get infected with COVID-19. If you’re a healthcare worker who gets infected by a patient, that’s not embarrassing at all. If you’re having an extramarital affair and your mister or mistress gets you sick, well, that’s embarrassing.

Today, we have a new leader. Coming down with the virus from a cat’s birthday party is now the stupidest known way to get COVID. It’s so stupid it’s difficult to believe it’s even real. And yet:

“When I heard about this, I said … it’s a joke. Probably they said that to conceal something else—but it was exactly that,” Álvarez told local station Radio Bio-Bio, as translated by Google Translate. “We have corroborated it with at least six of the 15 [infected] people who told us the same thing.”

I like the idea that he thought they were covering up something else, with this story. What could be worse than this?

It’s bad enough that there are so many thoughtless people in the world who refuse to take basic precautions to keep themselves and their fellow humans safe, such as socially distancing and wearing masks. But the existence of people actively interfering with those who are trying to protect themselves is almost too much to bear.

A Canadian casino executive and his wife chartered a private plane to a remote area of the Yukon territory, then posed as local motel workers to improperly obtain access to doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that had been brought in for an elderly and high-risk population. How were they caught?

Mr. Streicker said the two people asked if someone could take them to the airport after they were vaccinated, which “raised flags” with the vaccination team. They called the enforcement unit for the Civil Emergency Measures Act.

So in addition to being selfish, they’re also idiots. Don’t be like the Bakers.

In the past ten months, all manner of rules and regulations have been modified to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. A moratorium has been placed on evictions, and the expirations on things like car registrations have been extended, to reduce the need for folks to leave their homes. These changes were made to reduce the spread of the virus, and to lessen its harmful societal impacts.

Unfortunately, it clearly hasn’t been enough. Now, another rule is being modified, as Los Angeles County has suspended cremation limits. So many people are dying from COVID that LA needed to choose between the threat to public health caused by diminished air quality and the threat caused by an excess of corpses.

Stay home. Wash your hands. Wear a mask.

Weddings occupy far too prominent a place in American culture, with some couples going so far as to take on massive debt to finance excessively lavish celebrations that they can’t really afford. In the era of COVID, however, weddings have the potential to kill more than just your credit score. It’s unfortunate, but as with so many things in the past year, the responsible thing to do in a pandemic is to cancel gatherings.

Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to do that. It’s been nearly a month since I read this article on weddings in Texas during COVID-19, but I can’t get it out of my mind. It begins with a bridesmaid telling a wedding photographer that the groom had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The woman thanked [the photographer] for still showing up, considering “everything that’s going on with the groom.”…“So I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, don’t freak out. He doesn’t have symptoms. He’s fine.’ ”

No! That is not how this works.

She recalls one bridesmaid telling her, “I’m a teacher. I have fourteen students. If I’m willing to risk it, why aren’t you?”

No! What?! One fears this selfish person teachers her students that if all their friends jump off a cliff, they ought to as well.

[The photographer] recalled one conversation from that wedding, before she left the reception. “I have children,” she told a bridesmaid. “What if my children die?” The bridesmaid responded, “I understand, but this is her wedding day.”

No!

Stay home. Wash your hands. Wear a mask.

Previously, we had superspreader Santa. Now, it appears a Christmas tree costume may have led to the infection dozens of people in San Jose, and at least one death so far.

[Photo via Marianne Favro]

There are countless ways folks are being foolish as this pandemic rips through America, and it’s quite literally killing people. Wash your hands, wear a mask, stay home.

We don’t have to “be best”, because that’s nonsense grammar. However, we should all strive to be better. To give just one example, in the era of COVID, restaurant patrons should strive to be better than this:

“Workers frequently are subjected to sexualized comments from customers, the majority of which were a request from male customers that women service workers remove their mask so that the men could judge their looks, and, implicitly, determine their tips on that basis,” states the report.

Tipping is a terrible custom, but we’re all stuck with it for now. Sexism and misogyny, however, we each have the power to reduce.

In the midst of a global pandemic, Santa Claus is a really bad idea.