This story has been brewing for several weeks. We saw a few weeks ago how Michigan's governor Whitmer imposed excessive and ludicrous guidelines on her citizens in the name of "keeping them safe" from the spread of the Chinese coronavirus. New York, California and New Jersey are among the nation's most restrictive and most irrationally-run states when it comes to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Presently, this map shows the status of the American states in their opening process (or not) as of May 16, 2020 at 4:04 AM Greenwich Summer Time:

A lorry driver who kissed a woman on her cheek to show gratitude for her assistance is now hunted by police in the UK. After asking for help to identify the 'criminal,' law enforcement received a massive eye-roll from the public.

In the sleepy Derbyshire town of Matlock, a most heinous crime took place on April 28. A lorry driver pecked a 70-year-old woman on the cheek, after she helped him free his stuck truck from under a bridge by directing traffic.

The man thanked her with a kiss, and now he's wanted for sexual assault. Seriously.

Nearly three weeks after the incident, Derbyshire Police appealed to the public for help tracking down the suspect.

Jonathan Greenblatt is the leading authority on antisemitism, in the eyes of the mainstream media, as the CEO of the pro-Israel organization the Anti-Defamation League, and yesterday morning he reported that a Jewish holy site in Iran had been "set afire."

Disturbing reports from #Iran that the tomb of Esther & Mordechai, a holy Jewish site, was set afire overnight. We hope that the the authorities bring the perpetrators of this #antisemitic act to justice & commit to protecting the holy sites of all religious minorities in Iran.

There was no link to a news report in the tweet. But the rightwing pro-Israel echo chamber went to work. The Jerusalem Post published a story, headlined "Holy Jewish site of Esther and Mordechai set ablaze in Iran — reports," and cited Greenblatt as the lead source.

Greenblatt "announced" that the tomb had been "torched," the Post said:

BERLIN - National Director of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Jonathan Greenblatt announced Friday on Twitter that the tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Iran was torched.

That article was authored by Benjamin Weinthal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the neoconservative thinktank that has been propagandizing about Iran's supposed aggressive threat to the world in order to instigate an American attack.

Roughly 27 million Americans and their families have lost their health insurance after sweeping layoffs and business closures during the coronavirus lockdown. Nearly 80 percent of Americans who lost their employer-backed health plans might be eligible for coverage from state-administered Medicaid plans and other plans through the Affordable Care Act, but such could prove unlikely for a number of reasons.

Millions of others — including dependents who relied on plans from another member of their family — are ineligible, leaving them without any insurance options, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, The Independent reported.

Roughly 6 million people who lost their employer-provided insurance won't be eligible for subsidized coverage, including nearly 4 million others whose family's income falls above eligibility limits and thousands of others who don't meet citizenship or immigration requirements, the report says.

Few Americans will fall into the so-called "coverage gap" after losing their job because of wages earned before they were laid off combined with unemployment benefits and a temporary $600-a-week boost from supplemental relief, which could push the annual income for many newly unemployed Americans into a threshold making them ineligible for Medicaid marketplace subsidies in states that didn't expand them.

In the past few months, governments ranging from Australia to the United Kingdom and corporations as influential as Google and Apple have pushed the idea that cellphone tracking can be used to effectively fight COVID-19. There was even an essay here at Quillette, arguing that a mandatory phone tracking app would save lives while also saving jobs as a policy alternative to economic lockdown. Unfortunately, the idea that phone apps should be popularized or even mandated to fight outbreaks is techno-utopian, based on optimism rather than evidence. The real impact of such an approach on society wouldn't be better immunity, but rather the acceptance and creeping growth of an even more powerful and omniscient global surveillance state.

Governments, scientists, and product designers are racing to find technological fixes for the spread of COVID-19. Some of these solutions — such as more efficient mass-production of masks, more accurate and prevalent testing, and efforts to create a vaccine — are valid and vital, and defend the health of citizens and strength of society without violating civil liberties. Masks can arguably even help promote freedom by disguising protestors and flustering increasingly prevalent public facial recognition cameras. And there are other key antiviral tactics that don't rely on cutting-edge technology: handwashing, social distancing, and contact tracing.

Contact tracing is the important practice of interviewing the sick to find out who they've met in recent days, so that health authorities can warn them, so they can take proper precautions, isolate themselves, and seek medical help if necessary. It is a resource-intensive practice, requiring tens of thousands of human "contact tracers" for large populations. Silicon Valley has clamored that there must be ways to automate this process. At least two dozen governments are already experimenting with or rolling out contact tracing phone apps.

Academics have provided ammunition for this approach, recently stating in Science that "controlling the epidemic by manual contact tracing is infeasible. The use of a contact tracing app... would be sufficient to stop the epidemic if used by enough people." Regardless of rationale, the immediate, often unsaid problem is that phone contact tracing is not accurate enough for medical use, and trying to implement this strategy will expose individuals and authorities to false positives and false negatives and bring false confidence. The bigger problem is that the promotion of phone contact tracing will help normalize mass surveillance and further erode our already endangered civil liberties.

Single men and women in the Netherlands are being advised to organise a seksbuddy (sex buddy) after criticism of rules dictating that home visitors maintain a 1.5-metre distance from their hosts during the coronavirus lockdown.

In a typically open-minded intervention, official guidance from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) has been amended to suggest those without a permanent sexual partner come to mutually satisfactory agreements with like-minded individuals.

On the advice of scientists at the RIVM, the Netherlands has been on what the government describes as an "intelligent lockdown" since 23 March, allowing up to three visitors into homes on the strict condition that they keep their distance.

The impact on air travel from the coronavirus will be felt for many years to come, according to the International Air Transport Association, which estimates that passenger traffic won't rebound to pre-crisis levels until at least 2023.

The trade association for the world's airlines said that demand for air travel had dropped more than 90% in Europe and the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, and warned that recovery will be even slower if lockdowns and travel restrictions are extended.

"We are asking governments to have a phased approach to restart the industry and to fly again," Alexandre de Juniac, the IATA's director general and CEO, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Thursday. De Juniac is hopeful that some flying will resume by the summer.

"We are aiming at reopening and boosting the domestic market by end of the second quarter, and opening the regional or continental markets — such as Europe, North America or Asia-Pacific — by the third quarter, and intercontinental in the fall," he said.

The company building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has vowed to appeal Germany's refusal to remove the multibillion-dollar project from the restrictions laid out in the "discriminatory" EU Gas Directive.

The latest amendment to the EU rules was greenlighted in April last year, long after Nord Stream 2 construction began. The legislature made the rules governing the European gas market apply to all pipelines to and from third countries. The new rule means Russia's Gazprom, which designed the project, will be allowed to use not more than 50 percent of the pipeline capacity while allowing third parties to use the rest of it.

In a ruling published on Friday, the German energy regulator, Bundesnetzagentur, said that the massive project, meant to pump natural gas from Russia to Germany, is not exempt from the amended European rules known as the Gas Directive. It said that, to qualify for an exemption, the pipeline should have been completed by May of last year.

While rates of infection around the UK vary wildly, the capital has managed to hit a low of fewer than 24 cases a day. Now the clamor is growing to ease up on the lockdown and get back to normal life.

With fewer than 24 new cases of coronavirus appearing in London each day now, surely, for the love of man, it's time we moved back to normality, pronto.

From the outset, it's been drummed into us that it's the science that matters. The science said that the R number - the crucial indicator of how many new people one coronavirus sufferer would infect - needed to be less than one, and holding, before any easing of restrictions would be considered.

In Germany, where their line in the sand was R1 - having three consecutive days above that figure this week - they're even kicking off the Bundesliga again tomorrow. Why not here?

If you are like me, you are looking forward to finally getting out of your house and maybe having a few drinks or a nice dinner at your local bar or restaurant. But going out to your local bar or restaurant once the lockdown ends comes with a steep price.

That's because three cities, in Louisiana, Texas and Missouri, will only allow non-essential businesses to reopen if they agree to collect customers personal information.

According to NOLA Ready, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the city of New Orleans are creating a "new normal" by forcing bars and restaurants to collect customers personal information.

"We know everyone is eager to reopen. It's not going back to normal; it's what we're calling 'the new normal.' It will be the data and not the date that drives not only the decision but the phased approach to reopen the City of New Orleans. Today, we are outlining what those guidelines will be for the City," said Mayor Latoya Cantrell.

As Forbes.com explains the "new normal" is for bars and restaurants to become government snitches.

"New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced business owners will be required to keep logs of the names and contact information of patrons who enter their establishments once the Big Easy reopens to help with contact tracing — a move that Cantrell called part of the new normal, as New Orleans and Louisiana plan to rollback coronavirus restrictions this month."