No sex until we get vaccinated!

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly column looking at the lighter side of politics.

Italians aren’t f***ing about when it comes to standing up to Big Pharma.

With anger rising across the continent at the slow delivery of coronavirus vaccines, one Italian politician has had an idea: a sex strike until the drug companies sort out the mess and deliver what they promised.

Ferruccio Sansa, a regional lawmaker from Liguria, suggested on Facebook a boycott of Pfizer drugs such as Tavor (which stops you from being anxious) and Viagra (same).

He said many people “now believe that vaccines go to the countries that pay the most” and legal action to prevent this happening would be “slow and complex” but suggested citizens “perhaps have another weapon [!] in their hands” in the form of a Viagra boycott.

Sansa admitted that this would make Italians a “little less sparkling and more anxious” but said it could be worth it to remind the pharma giants of their vaccine obligations.

There was some support on social media for Sansa’s idea but will he be able to keep it up? Who knows.

It’s not just the drugmakers who are making it difficult to get vaccinated, there’s also the police.

In the southern English town of Southend, the cops were called to break up what they were told was an illegal rave, but instead of finding a group of young people off their faces on MDMA, they discovered a load of pensioners waiting in line to get the coronavirus jab and off their faces on tea and biscuits.

“Grumpy old men and grumpy old women were in abundance,” the owner of the venue where the jabs were being administered told local media, but they should count themselves lucky. In China, they’re now giving international travelers four coronavirus tests — a nasal swab, a throat swab, a blood test and … an anal swab. Rumors that staff at the Eurostar terminal at Gare du Midi in Brussels are being fitted for extra-long rubber gloves were unconfirmed at the time of going to press.

There were no reports of any of the old people in Southend having animals with them, which is just as well because in Chile, every single person who attended a birthday party for a cat became infected with coronavirus.

Health officials in the small town of Santo Domingo said the cat’s owner was the Patient Zero of the party. When asked for comment by Declassified, the cat simply gave a dismissive look and wandered off.

CAPTION COMPETITION

“Don’t forget the plan, Charles. You create a diversion and I break into AstraZeneca HQ and steal the vaccines.”

Can you do better? Email [email protected] or on Twitter @pdallisonesque

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Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag (there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze).

“Promise kept: Putin leaves office as hell freezes over” by John Hudson

Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.