In case you hadn’t heard, coronavirus is causing a bit of trouble around the world. One country particularly feeling its effects is Italy, which has gone into complete lockdown in an attempt to avoid the virus spreading any further. To help pass the time – and offer its own helping hand (wink wink) – Pornhub is now giving free premium content to the entire country.
As well as making premium access available for the whole of March, Pornhub is donating the month’s Modelhub proceeds to “support Italy during this unfortunate time”. Modelhub is a clip site where performers can sell their own content from their Pornhub accounts, though the site gets 35 per cent of their video sales. Writing on Twitter, Pornhub made it clear that “model earnings will remain untouched” and that donations will come “straight from Pornhub’s share”.
This isn’t the first time free porn has been offered to people in coronavirus quarantine. Last month, adult website CamSoda gave free porn tokens to those stuck on cruise ships. “They are not only dealing with the fear of infection, which is terrifying, but boredom,” Daryn Parker, the company’s vice president, said at the time. “In an effort to keep their minds off of the coronavirus and to help with the boredom, we’re offering passengers and crews the ability to have fun in a safe and controlled environment with camming.”
Italy has seen the worst outbreak of coronavirus in the whole of Europe, with the virus infecting more than 15,000 people and killing over 1,000 so far. The country was put into a total lockdown on Tuesday (March 10), shortly after Lombardy’s – the centre of the country’s crisis – health care system was announced to be “one step from collapse”. As part of the lockdown, all shops have been closed, except for pharmacies and those stocking food, as well as workplaces, theatres, schools, and museums.
Yesterday (March 13), Boris Johnson announced the UK’s plans to prevent a similar spread of the virus, though he didn’t recommend the cancellation of public events or closure of schools, a move described as “concerning” by former health secretary Jeremy Hunt. Under the new rules, anyone with a continuous cough or high temperature is being asked to self-isolate for seven days, and testing will only be done on those in the hospital.
Although Hunt believes we have just “four weeks before we get to the stage that Italy is at”, the BBC says the UK’s outbreak likely won’t mirror the epidemic in Italy, due to the UK quickly detecting and tracing cases, as well as a lower death rate and the fact that cases are more spread out in the UK.
Whether we’re on the precipice of lockdown or not, at least we might have free porn to look forward to.