Day 41: Celebrity Death Pool

The upper echelons of Iranian society were hit "early" on (due to the same people ignoring community spread for weeks on end), but as of yesterday the US is accumulating celebrity cases: Tom Hanks, his wife Rita Wilson (apparently on location in Australia), Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert (who shut down the NBA single-handedly, possibly by touching all the mics at a presser), a congressional staffer, and a production crew member of Riverdale, a CW TV show. On the other hand, Steve Wozniak's wife turned out to just have a sinus infection after all, and Daniel Radcliffe was also just a rumor.

Kim Jong-un has allegedly fled Pyongyang to avoid infection. In Italy, you can be charged with murder for breaking quarantine. Ravenous wild monkeys with no tourists to feed them are "terrorizing" Lopburi, Thailand.

The Germ Boat count may finally be slowing down. Newsweek reports that Carnival Corporation has suspended all Princess Cruises (operators of Germ Boats #2, #6, #8, and #10) operations for two months. But Carnival is a bigger company than that, with 9 other cruise lines, many of which have already hit the germ boat list: the Holland America Line (#4), AIDA Cruises (#5), Carnival Cruise Line (#7), Costa Cruises (#9), Carnival CSSC, the Cunard Line, the Seabourn Cruise Line, P&O Cruises, and P&O Cruises Australia. Politico reports on the shenanigans of cruise companies in general; PlagueBlog expects more plague ships to come.

Cancellations: Congress has closed the Capitol, House, and Senate to the public. Apparently we have a pro soccer league here in the US, and their season is suspended, too.

P.S. Today's count for Massachusetts is 108, 82 from Biogen, 5 from travel, a cluster of 8 at the Berkshire Medical Center, and 9 still under investigation. Of the 13 new cases, 5 are Biogen-related (thus far). A coronavirus patient who had not travelled was not properly isolated at the Berkshire Medical Center earlier this month, leading to the quarantine of over 50 nurses. The governor has already said we have community spread out there, but the county has only 9 cases total so far so PlagueBlog is unsure what exactly is going on in the Berkshires.