Once again, John Oliver gives the best debrief of the coronavirus situation

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/17/one-again-john-oliver-gives-t.html

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I see what you did there.

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Holds up better than sitcoms without a laugh track…

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Surprisingly, I feel better. I can’t account for any particular data that makes me feel this way, other than I’m all cried out and left with only nervous laughter.

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Has it been pulled already?

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I don’t need John Oliver to tell me that a hamster is smarter than the president. I mean that’s the platform he ran on, right?

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I don’t remember the hamster running for office.

Would have been a better choice though.

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Hey! Why you always gotta politicize Trump’s failings?

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What I wonder: was John’s muted performance here due to the seriousness of his subject matter, or does he really play best with an audience to work off of?

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Part of this is viewable in Canada here (along with some other people):

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TikTok Hamster, vermin demonstrating better hygiene advice than the president.

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If we go by definition #3, 45 == vermin.

ver·min

/ˈvərmən/

noun

  1. wild animals that are believed to be harmful to crops, farm animals, or game, or that carry disease, e.g., rodents.
  • parasitic worms or insects.

  • people perceived as despicable and as causing problems for the rest of society.

“the vermin who ransacked her house”

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It is good. And I would love to watch him daily if he used 1/2 the humor and no audience.

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Sorry, despite the cuteness of hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs, they are rodent vermin. If you saw one in your home and it wasn’t your pet, you would be calling an exterminator or trying to get your cat to kill it.

It was eerie with no audience, but informative.

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Some kind soul pointed me to using Opera browser with its native VPN enabled. Works like a charm to get around geoblocks @heligo.

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Still available for me on the show’s own YT channel (and I’m not in the US):

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It’s so refreshing for once, to see someone in authority cop to having (collectively) dropped the ball. We fucked up with testing.

What about South Korea? They’re past their peak, they don’t need to do nearly as much testing as before… is there a valid scientific or engineering reason we couldn’t fly samples across the ocean to have them tested over there, and tesults wired back?

I get it that there are all kinds of possible political, financial,privacy,logistical reasons why that wouldn’t work…

I guess the one excuse Id readily accept is that their labs are already booked up full time doing tests for other countries in Asia.

I just want to see the german test getting used here in this country. This massive mitigation approach sucks!

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I watched this and halfway through realized this means that they aren’t making any more tv. No more movies, no more commercials.

The whole world has cracked open and something funny is oozing out

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I’m a big fan of his erstwhile podcast “The Bugle” with Andy Zaltzman (still going sans Oliver) and he’s great at hilarious shouty rants and run-ons without an audience, so I suspect it’s the seriousness of the issue.