Tag: COVID-19

The Onion: Health Experts Worry Coronavirus Will Overwhelm America’s GoFundMe System

LOL.

BALTIMORE—Warning that the nation was unprepared to deal with the fallout of the global pandemic, researchers from Johns Hopkins University told reporters Friday they worried that Covid-19 would overwhelm America’s GoFundMe system. “GoFundMe is the bedrock of the American healthcare system, and as the number of Covid-19 cases continues to rapidly spread, we fear the servers just won’t be able to take it,” said research director Dr. Monica White, who stressed that if the pandemic were to grow any worse, there simply would not be enough $5 and $10 donations from sympathetic strangers to go around. “America’s GoFundMe system is already overburdened. There are only so many links from sick friends of friends we can share on social media before the whole thing collapses. We recommend that if anyone is suffering from minor financial strife such a medical debt from the cost of insulin or cancer treatment, you defer to those diagnosed with Covid-19.” At press time, GoFundMe employees announced they were working around the clock to ensure the health and safety of the nation

The Hard Times: CDC Recommends All Americans Keep Audio Logs During Pandemic for Future Protagonists to Stumble Upon

LOL.

“Keeping an audio log is a very simple process that will likely keep others safe in the coming days,” said Redfield. “Future generations will thank us when rummaging through the wreckage we have left behind, wondering what happened, if they stumble across your exposition-heavy audio recording that ends with you coughing uncontrollably. By leaving your fate ambiguous, they won’t know how much danger they might be in, which will do wonders to expand their world and curiosity about what happened to ours.”

Weaponizing South Korean Contact Tracing

South Korea is relying extensively on contact tracing of COVID-19 positive patients and coupling that with controversial text alerts that reveal a lot of personal information about patients (names are not included, but it looks like more than enough information is included to de-anonymize most patients).

As part of the information the South Korean government includes in text alerts is information on what restaurants and businesses a patient had visited. As can be imagined, this has a major impact on those businesses, and has led to fraudsters attempting to blackmail restaurants,

While restaurants that had been named closed temporarily for fumigation, they say their association with the virus could put them out of business.

Fraudsters are now playing on those fears. A man claiming to be infected with Covid-19 called several restaurants in the Mapo district of Seoul warning that their business would suffer if he told health authorities he had eaten there, and demanded money in return for his silence. Police are investigating the case but have yet to locate the suspect.