A few thoughts

Wow, people are stupid. Corona beer has suffered a serious blow to its popularity and the stock price of its parent company has plunged. As I presume readers know, corona is merely the Spanish (and for that Italian) word for "crown." update: (This turns out to be a misleading interpretation of a poll that was widely misrepresented in news media. Sales of Corona beer remain strong.)

Thought 2: I'm increasingly thinking that new indictments in the Jeffrey Epstein matter are overdue. They haven't even indicted Ghislaine Maxwell. The FBI reportedly seized thousands of photos and videos from Epstein's various estates, and the Virgin Islands has sued the estate claiming that Epstein continued to traffic teenage girls right up until his latest indictment. I have to wonder if whatever juice it was that got him off with a wrist slap the first time, along with total immunity for his co-conspirators, isn't still operative. Quoth (via TPM) of reporting by Vicky Ward:

 Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking.

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)

Thought 3: Krugzilla on the mind-bogglingly incompetent response of the Cheeto Benito administration to the Corona beervirus epidemic. I've been at pains to urge people not to overreact but the worst thing you can do in risk communication is dismiss or downplay a situation. Denying that it's a problem and ordering competent officials not to talk about it is a) not going to reassure people and b) astonishingly stupid because reality will be what reality wants to be. This is magical thinking: If I say it's not a problem, then my words have the power to make it not a problem. Chimpy did pretty much the same thing with hurricane Katrina and we all saw what that got him.