Trump Heralds Russian COVID-19 Vaccine as “Awesome!”

WASHINGTON – In response to this week’s announcement of an “approved” Russian novel coronavirus vaccine, President Trump called the vaccine “completely great and awesome.”

“It is with great pleasure that we make this announcement,” said Russian Ambassador Ivan Kaputnik, joining Trump at the press conference.  “Although we are not fully complete with 100% voluntary human trials, we are complete enough to proceed with widespread distribution immediately,” Kaputnik said through an interpreter.  “Many of the inmates who participated are still very much alive,” he further added cryptically.

“I think this is just awesome, truly, completely great and awesome, a great day for the country and the world, really,” Trump said.  “We need a vaccine sooner than later, and we can’t always wait, this is pretty urgent, really, we need something now.  And I’m sure that when this is released, our Russian partners will gladly share with the United…”

The President paused as Ambassador Kaputnik shook his head negatively.

“We will work out some sort of deal, I’m sure,” Trump added.

“We wish to thank all doctors working on these vaccines for their remarkable progress since this tragedy began,” Kaputnik continued.  “Although Russia developed this vaccine completely on her own, certainly in no way stealing from another nation or nations, we realize that the scientific community as a whole deserves credit here,” he said, adding, “but Russia was first.”

In an interview broadcast on the Russian state-run news agency “PravdaLike,” Warden Marko Pavlovof said that the human trials he’d supervised on inmates “went completely great and awesome in fact.”  “These men and women committed a variety of political crimes against the state,” Pavlovof said.  “Yet they immediately volunteered to be injected with [an] experimental drug, which only shows the commitment of every Russian journalist – incarcerated or still waiting to be –to help mother-Russia combat this vicious disease.”

Although bullish on pharma stocks, Wall Street seemingly ignored Trump’s latest Russian endorsement, and took out some late afternoon frustration by beating up tech and construction in a coke-fueled rampage.

Photo Credits: Unsplash, screen capture from the movie "Airplane!"

BREAKING: Traffic Remains Clear

UNITED STATES - Today local television traffic reporters unanimously noted "clear" or "green" traffic conditions in every metropolitan area around the nation.

Eating a Doordash-ed burrito from Taco Bell, local T.V. personality Jake Jacobs (from award-winning KFAKE news) told IRREVERENT what reporters across the nation have been saying for weeks: "Traffic is terrific, there's no congestion.  Nothing to see here."

Grounded from the KFAKE news chopper for 18 days so far, Jacobs waxed philosophic.  "It's weird being stuck inside like this after spending every morning gliding above it all, watching the traffic, hearing all those honking horns," Jacobs said.  "The silence....  It's strange, terrifying, yet wonderful.  And deafening."

Jacobs, who may have been high, then drifted into a mid-morning nap.

Relaxing in her bathtub, Pam Olive from WBOG agreed. "Yeah, I miss the chopper too," Olive admitted.  "It was fun cruising over all those losers stuck down there, honking in futility.  Plus the pilot was cute.  Wonder if he's on Zoom?"

Olive, who hit her 17th day today in home isolation, also offered her own reflections on her job's changing role.  "Pretty sure they're going to fire me soon," she said.  "There's no traffic to report, and there's only so many internet stories and stupid pet fluff pieces you can file from home before everyone's like 'who cares?'"

Others remain optimistic.  "This will be over one day, and then, oh boy are people gonna hit the highways!" said Frank Franklin from Detroit's KBULL-TV.  "Our jobs as local T.V. traffic guys is gonna be more important than ever.  Just wait until it takes you three hours to drive across town to finally go out to eat, you know, at whatever restaurant is still open.  Then everyone will be tuning in like crazy!  Ratings through the roof!"

Illustrations: screenshot from WISN.com, photo by Artem Labunsky on Unsplash.

Statisticians Conclude Study of Trump's Non-Zero Approval Rating

NEW YORK – Prominent statisticians today unveiled their analysis of why President Trump does not have a 0% job approval rating.

 “According to recent polls, 39% of all registered voters, and 85% of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing as president,” said Heaven Wallace, who headed the three month study and is currently the Mark Twain Chair of Improbable Statistics at Princeton University.  “Of course the logical question to ask is ‘why is this non-zero?’  None of us could explain that, so that really was the kick-off to our study.”

The group – which includes statisticians from Ivy League and 12 other schools with advanced statistics programs – took an independent, deep analysis of political polling data, combined with demographic and lifestyle data across a broad range of American voting age adults.

“We learned a lot about how people make choices, in general, based on basically nothing,” said Jovan Short, Professor of Mathematical Chaos at Holcolm College.  “For example, there are roughly 19 – 28% of the American population who just won’t believe anything they’re told, no matter whether the source is one they consider credible or not.  But stated party affiliation seems to matter here: self-professed Democrats end up on the lower end of the scale, 9-16%, whereas Republicans are on the opposite side at 38-43%.”

“We started calling them the ‘black hole’ group – information goes in, but never makes it out in any useful fashion,” said Trevor Wilcox, from M.I.T.  “This includes themselves, which we found fascinating: when their own responses were read back to them, they denied they responded the way they did, even after we began videotaping the sessions and playing back the tape.”

“This refusal to acknowledge outside information was a point of considerable pride for this group,” said Cameron Gibbs, Chair of Public Policy Statistics at Yalvard University.  “This seems to indicate that whether you have Donald Trump, or Josef Mengele, or Winnie The Pooh running on a Republican ticket, they can poll somewhere in the 30-40% range, no matter what they say or do.“

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