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Coronavirus is a gift in some ways.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

We must elect him GOD! or BETTER! THAN! GOD!

He is GOD but with a hotter wife!

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

GOD! IS! ASKERED! OF! TRUMP!

AND!

HIS!

SPACE!

FORCE!

Trump assigned GOD to command the SpaceForce!!

No I'm not going to invest into Antifa.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Rin will have to have pussy air dropped onto the roof of his place from Outremont.

Can you get Coronavirus from tit fucking?

Patrick says

Coronavirus is a gift in some ways.

They didn't say illegals would stop coming to USA.

Yeah, can you believe fascist Mexico is closing the border?

https://patrick.net/post/1330762/2020-03-14-racist-mexico-considering-closing-us-mexican-border

Bolsonaro, Trump, et all aren't fascists and to claim they are dilutes the term as well as displays an ignorance of history. Enough with the hyperbole, false equivalences, and childish name calling.

Smarten up.

Yep. Fact is Bolsonaro and Trumps remarks on borders and nationhood wouldn't have been controversial way up into the 90s. These remarks would have and WERE heard from not only a Moynihan or Tip O'Neil, but a Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi It was only in the past 20 years, really the past 10, that borderless globalism became unquestionable, and without a debate.

At least she'd show us her tits once in a while. She's proud of those puppies.

Um Mr AF I respectfully disagree. I think Sarah Palin gives up anal.

My evidence:

www.youtube.com/embed/nnzKzHKUKoo

www.youtube.com/embed/N7L9nwSoTVo

jazz_music says

Fascism is real.

We got us a fascist regime running the formerly greatest country in the world AND a money is no object media system to cover for every play.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/29/after-win-brazilian-fascist-jair-bolsonaro-worlds-capitalists-salivate-over-new

Okay, so enforcing the law at the border is fascist ? To not be fascist and of course racist, then we should open the border and provide a welfare state ?

Your high-school and lame shaming tactics and your AntiFa-style online bullying are not working here.

It's "portly".

He is YOUR president as well, AF! Enjoy!

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Really, I've never had such a good time with the Internet, I must say.

It only gets better.

Did you pick your gender yet little girl?

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Really, I've never had such a good time with the Internet, I must say.

Me too. If stocks keep dropping, it will just get better.

MM1 says

jazz_music says

Fascism is real.

We got us a fascist regime running the formerly greatest country in the world AND a money is no object media system to cover for every play.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/29/after-win-brazilian-fascist-jair-bolsonaro-worlds-capitalists-salivate-over-new

Okay, so enforcing the law at the border is fascist ? To not be fascist and of course racist, then we should open the border and provide a welfare state ?

Your high-school and lame shaming tactics and your AntiFa-style online bullying are not working here.

Dude, you can't argue with people like this. Everything is racist and sexist and fascist and Hitler. There's zero rationality...they've lost their minds because of emotional distress and TDS.

I like how our POTUS tells liberals to go fuck themselves during idiotic questions from left wing pressers. Too fucking beautiful how that works when a leader doesn’t give a shit what they label him as. Unlike most Americans who instantly turn into worthless apologetic noodles upon accusation.

Lol that’s great.

It IS a lawyer- and media-propagated hoax.

Please see this for correct attitude: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity-uk-nhs-outbreak-pandemic-government-a9399101.html

These are refined and intelligent Europeans who this time are completely right.

It's still a overblown hyped up hoax, Trump has sucked all of the Commie Socialist shit out of it, by preempting them with a National Emergency.

Trump can deny anyone entry to the US he wants. No more incubator ships, manufacturing thousands of cases then importing them into the fly over States.

Tenpoundbass says

Trump can deny anyone entry to the US he wants.

That is RACIST! At the same time, he did not close borders fast enough!

porkchopexpress says

Everything is racist and sexist and fascist and Hitler.

If everything is fascist, then nothing is fascist- that is the problem.

Cull the herd! Let God sort out the casualties.

thomasdong1776 says

MAGAs have to be the stupidest motherfuckers on the planet

No. TPB gets it. Trump is just out hoaxing the hoaxers.

Many people just don't get it, that if it's a very real and truly high risk pandemic, that's actually just a more sophisticated and elaborate hoax than anything the libtards could ever pull off.

Trump now gets to do more of his favorite thing (i.e. exercising impulsive Presidential power) while also knowing that when the Trump recession hits, he can blame it on Covid-19.

WINNING !!

This is great news. He'll survive to win the election.

When evidence an oppressive regime mass murdering dissidents, is used to help get a senile old coot with dementia elected by the Western Liberal do gooders.

Die diseased invaders!!!

Meh, not really "mass graves".

AIDS... that’s faggots stuff, 100% on the left. And few stupidly confused pussy starved Republicans.

Seriously, the lesson of AIDS is that religions came up with some very good rules.

Mass M2M ass-fucking leads to mass death. Every single traditional religion forbids it because of accumulated wisdom about epidemics.

Pork and shellfish also spread disease unless there is pretty strict regulation. Thus the ancient Jewish rules about kosher food. And hand-washing before eating.

The reason religions exist is that their adherents have managed to exist. They found a formula for survival. Not that they should be blindly followed in all details, but they should not be dismissed as "mere superstition" either.

Guy hoarders thousands of sanitizing products to price gouge over Corona panic, and now can't sell any of it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes-amazon-sellers.html

On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death in the United States was announced, brothers Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver S.U.V. to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tenn., they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves.

Over the next three days, Noah Colvin took a 1,300-mile road trip across Tennessee and into Kentucky, filling a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes, mostly from “little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods,” his brother said. “The major metro areas were cleaned out.”

Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, “it was crazy money.” To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic.

The next day, Amazon pulled his items and thousands of other listings for sanitizer, wipes and face masks. The company suspended some of the sellers behind the listings and warned many others that if they kept running up prices, they’d lose their accounts. EBay soon followed with even stricter measures, prohibiting any U.S. sales of masks or sanitizer.

Now, while millions of people across the country search in vain for hand sanitizer to protect themselves from the spread of the coronavirus, Mr. Colvin is sitting on 17,700 bottles of the stuff with little idea where to sell them.

“It’s been a huge amount of whiplash,” he said. “From being in a situation where what I’ve got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to ‘What the heck am I going to do with all of this?’”

Mr. Colvin is one of probably thousands of sellers who have amassed stockpiles of hand sanitizer and crucial respirator masks that many hospitals are now rationing, according to interviews with eight Amazon sellers and posts in private Facebook and Telegram groups from dozens more. Amazon said it had recently removed hundreds of thousands of listings and suspended thousands of sellers’ accounts for price gouging related to the coronavirus.

Amazon, eBay, Walmart and other online-commerce platforms are trying to stop their sellers from making excessive profits from a public health crisis. While the companies aimed to discourage people from hoarding such products and jacking up their prices, many sellers had already cleared out their local stores and started selling the goods online.

Now both the physical and digital shelves are nearly empty.

Mikeala Kozlowski, a nurse in Dudley, Mass., has been searching for hand sanitizer since before she gave birth to her first child, Nora, on March 5. When she searched stores, which were sold out, she skipped getting gas to avoid handling the pump. And when she checked Amazon, she couldn’t find it for less than $50.

“You’re being selfish, hoarding resources for your own personal gain,” she said of the sellers.

Sites like Amazon and eBay have given rise to a growing industry of independent sellers who snatch up discounted or hard-to-find items in stores to post online and sell around the world.

These sellers call it retail arbitrage, a 21st-century career that has adults buying up everything from limited-run cereals to Fingerling Monkeys, a once hot toy. The bargain hunters look for anything they can sell at a sharp markup. In recent weeks, they found perhaps their biggest opportunity: a pandemic.

As they watched the list of Amazon’s most popular searches crowd with terms like “Purell,” “N95 mask” and “Clorox wipes,” sellers said, they did what they had learned to do: Suck up supply and sell it for what the market would bear.

Initially, the strategy worked. For several weeks, prices soared for some of the top results to searches for sanitizer, masks and wipes on Amazon, according to a New York Times analysis of historical prices from Jungle Scout, which tracks data for Amazon sellers. The data shows that both Amazon and third-party sellers like Mr. Colvin increased their prices, which then mostly dropped when Amazon took action against price gouging this month.

At the high prices, people still bought the products en masse, and Amazon took a cut of roughly 15 percent and eBay roughly 10 percent, depending on the price and the seller.

Then the companies, pressured by growing criticism from regulators and customers, cracked down. After the measures last week, Amazon went further on Wednesday, restricting sales of any coronavirus-related products from certain sellers.

“Price gouging is a clear violation of our policies, unethical, and in some areas, illegal,” Amazon said in a statement. “In addition to terminating these third party accounts, we welcome the opportunity to work directly with states attorneys general to prosecute bad actors.”

Mr. Colvin, 36, a former Air Force technical sergeant, said he started selling on Amazon in 2015, developing it into a six-figure career by selling Nike shoes and pet toys, and by following trends.

In early February, as headlines announced the coronavirus’s spread in China, Mr. Colvin spotted a chance to capitalize. A nearby liquidation firm was selling 2,000 “pandemic packs,” leftovers from a defunct company. Each came with 50 face masks, four small bottles of hand sanitizer and a thermometer. The price was $5 a pack. Mr. Colvin haggled it to $3.50 and bought them all.

He quickly sold all 2,000 of the 50-packs of masks on eBay, pricing them from $40 to $50 each, and sometimes higher. He declined to disclose his profit on the record but said it was substantial.

The success stoked his appetite. When he saw the panicked public starting to pounce on sanitizer and wipes, he and his brother set out to stock up.

Elsewhere in the country, other Amazon sellers were doing the same.

Chris Anderson, an Amazon seller in central Pennsylvania, said he and a friend had driven around Ohio, buying about 10,000 masks from stores. He used coupons to buy packs of 10 for around $15 each and resold them for $40 to $50. After Amazon’s cut and other costs, he estimates, he made a $25,000 profit.

Mr. Anderson is now holding 500 packs of antibacterial wipes after Amazon blocked him from selling them for $19 each, up from $16 weeks earlier. He bought the packs for $3 each.

Eric, a truck driver from Ohio who spoke on the condition that his surname not be published because he feared Amazon would retaliate, said he had also collected about 10,000 masks at stores. He bought each 10-pack for about $20 and sold most for roughly $80 each, though some he priced at $125.

“Even at $125 a box, they were selling almost instantly,” he said. “It was mind-blowing as far as what you could charge.” He estimates he made $35,000 to $40,000 in profit.

Now he has 1,000 more masks on order, but he’s not sure what to do with them. He said Amazon had been vague about what constituted price gouging, scaring away sellers who don’t want to risk losing their ability to sell on its site.

To regulators and many others, the sellers are sitting on a stockpile of medical supplies during a pandemic. The attorney general’s offices in California, Washington and New York are all investigating price gouging related to the coronavirus. California’s price-gouging law bars sellers from increasing prices by more than 10 percent after officials declare an emergency. New York’s law prohibits sellers from charging an “unconscionably excessive price” during emergencies.

An official at the Washington attorney general’s office said the agency believed it could apply the state’s consumer-protection law to sue platforms or sellers, even if they aren’t in Washington, as long as they were trying to sell to Washington residents.

Tennessee, where Mr. Colvin lives, has a price-gouging law that bars people from charging “unreasonable prices for essential goods and services, including gasoline, in direct response to a disaster,” according to a state website. On Saturday, after the The Times published this article, the Tennessee attorney general’s office said it had sent investigators to Mr. Colvin’s home, given him a cease-and-desist letter and was now investigating his case.

Mr. Colvin said he was simply fixing “inefficiencies in the marketplace.” Some areas of the country need these products more than others, and he’s helping send the supply toward the demand.

“There’s a crushing overwhelming demand in certain cities right now,” he said. “The Dollar General in the middle of nowhere outside of Lexington, Ky., doesn’t have that.”

He thought about it more. “I honestly feel like it’s a public service,” he added. “I’m being paid for my public service.”

As for his stockpile, Mr. Colvin said he would now probably try to sell it locally. “If I can make a slight profit, that’s fine,” he said. “But I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me.”