CamSoda-19

In what must be one of the most inappropriate gestures in the history of human life, adult website CamSoda has offered free webcam sessions to the 3,600-plus passengers currently quarantined aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship due to the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak.

“Covid-19” isn’t taking off, is it. Sars was a coronavirus, and everyone just called it Sars. It’s obviously the least of the World Health Organisation’s worries right now, but it really slept on coming up with a name for this one. You wouldn’t call WannaCry “the cryptovirus”, would you, or Storm Ciara “the weather”.

As for CamSoda’s lewd offer, we expect passengers’ initial exasperation soon subsided into the frantic entry of registration details up and down the ship. As the website’s vice-president Daryn Parker put it: “They’re not only dealing with the fear of infection, which is terrifying, but boredom.” Maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.

We hope that by the time you’re reading this, everyone has made it off the Diamond Princess with a clean bill of health. And as a hazmat-suited worker knocks on the final cabin door, we hope they find Brenda from Bakewell nattering away on CamSoda, having made a new friend for life in Fantasia from Palm Beach.