COVID Sex News Humor: The Things I Learn Misreading Headlines

COVID Sex News Humor: The Things I Learn Misreading Headlines

Every so often, you see a news headline that makes you do a double take; did I really just read that? One that stands out in Calico’s mind came from her hometown newspaper, which once topped a story about a local rancher accused of animal cruelty with the man’s nonsensical response to the accusations against him: “Horse Committed Suicide, Owner Says.”

Sometimes, the fault for Calico’s confusion shouldn’t be attributed to the headline writer or the text they cooked up, but to Calico’s own brain — a brain that is often inclined to impose nonsensical interpretations and interpolations that likely don’t occur to people with normal brains and/or brains that have been exposed to less science-fiction.

What sort of headline has Calico confused today? Are there time travel rules that are specific to pandemics? Did the Terminator ever travel to Denmark? Isn’t it about time for a “Doctor Why” spinoff series? Has Calico actually unwound her confusion about this headline, or is her befuddlement only getting worse with the passage of time? Find out in her latest post, “The Things I Learn Misreading Headlines.” 

– Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com porn movies for women and couples

Read on…

I think the leading cause of momentary confusion in my life, bearing in mind that I spend a LOT of moments quite confused, is news headlines.

Now, in my defense, some headlines are inherently confounding and bound to make many people scratch their heads, like “Homicide Victims Rarely Talk to Police” or the classic “Sqaud Helps Dog Bite Victim.”

Other times, the headline may be accurate and grammatically correct, but the information communicated just take a moment to process – like “Man Eats Underwear to Beat Breathalyzer,” for example.

On top of the above headlines, which any person might find befuddling, there’s this problem I have of inserting words that aren’t there, or imposing an interpretation informed by my own warped perspective and background. 

It’s that latter phenomenon that briefly had me prepared to read an article about how a fictional character from a popular sci-fi series had discussed sex in a way that somehow benefitted an entire Northern European country in dealing with COVID-19.

TARDIS vs. COVID?

The headline in question is from Bloomberg: “Doctor Who Espoused Sex Helped Denmark Weather Covid Storm.” Most reasonable (and reasonably normal) people would read that headline to mean that a doctor who has previously advocated sex, or perhaps the benefits thereof, has in some way helped Denmark cope with Covid.

But, in my sci-fi-addled brain, that headline suggest that Doctor Who had advocated for sex, on an episode I’d either forgotten or never seen, and this episode had then… well, hell I don’t know, gone particularly viral in Denmark and inspired the Danes to… use a time machine to escape the pandemic, or something?

Being naturally thick-headed and having encountered this headline before I’d finished my first cup of coffee, I made it as far as clicking through to that Bloomberg  article before it even occurred to me that this headline was NOT about the Doctor Who, but merely “(a) doctor who…”

Yeah, yeah, I know. In my defense, I’ve never claimed to be the sharpest bulb, or the brightest knife in the drawer, or however that works.

There’s Something Decidedly Not Rotten in Denmark

The good news about my confusion lasting long enough for me to click through to the Bloomberg article is that even thought it’s not about Doctor Who, it’s a legitimately interesting bit of science nonfiction. The article tells the story of Soren Brostrom, the head of the Danish Health Authority, who helped encourage public trust of COVID vaccines in Denmark through what seems to me a sadly revolutionary approach: being truthful, transparent and rational.

According to Bloomberg, Brostrom “gained international prominence for discussing a topic few health officials dared to broach: casual sex and Covid.” The doctor “had no qualms telling the media that singles needn’t be celibate” managing to discuss the risks of sex during the pandemic “without discouraging intimacy, which he said was natural.” 

“The former gynecologist’s frank pragmatism has helped his agency maintain an enviable level of public support even while navigating tough decisions,” Bloomberg adds in its report.

(Side note: “Frank Pragmatic” would be a great name for a character in a satirical parody of some kind. Maybe he could be law partners with someone named “Ernest Romance.”)

In part due to Brostrom’s efforts, Denmark now has the second highest rate of vaccination in Europe, behind only Malta (a country with fewer than 450,000 residents). True, on some level it’s a slight letdown to my imagination that Brostrom didn’t invent a time machine that enabled Danes to travel to a pre-COVID era, but that might be for the best. After all, had it been Doctor Who involved here, the Danes would just have been stuck trying to figure out which time travel rules apply – something even the show’s writers can’t seem to figure out.