MAGA: Donald Trump May Have Exposed Thousands of People to COVID-19

Time was, the American people could reliably expect that the federal government wouldn’t knowingly expose them to a highly contagious, deadly virus. Yet along with dozens of other norms, like the one wherein we didn’t have to wonder if the POTUS had made an erratic decision because he was hopped up on steroids, the election of Donald Trump shattered that one. We’ve known for some time now that Trump let COVID-19 gain a foothold in the country while he lied about it to the public, leading the U.S. to record more than 7.5 million cases and 211,000 deaths. And now, thanks to the White House’s recklessness when it came to cases closer to home, the president may be responsible for thousands more infections throughout the country.

Per USA Today:

President Donald Trump and other White House insiders infected with COVID-19 carried the virus across the country in a matter of days, potentially exposing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people as they went about their business, a USA Today investigation found. From a religious summit outside Atlanta to a campaign rally at a Pennsylvania airport and a private fundraiser in Minnesota, Trump, his aides, and political allies attended events with thousands of people, often without masks and little regard for social distancing…At least 6,000 people attended meetings, rallies, and other gatherings with them within a week of the Supreme Court nomination ceremony Sept. 26 in the White House Rose Garden, pegged as a potential “super-spreader” event. 

Epidemiologists and public health experts said USA Today’s analysis shows that the White House outbreak has put more people, in more places, at risk than has been previously known. It illustrates just how quickly and how far a super-spreader event can carry COVID-19. “I don’t think we know the extent of this outbreak yet…people could die,” said Danielle Ompad, an associate professor of epidemiology at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. “It’s the height of irresponsibility for people who are supposed to be leaders.”

As reporters Josh Salman and Dinah Voyles Pulver note, “the calculus for contracting COVID-19 is the congestion, proximity, and time spent with others,” and “not wearing masks greatly increases that exposure.” In other words, Trump and Co. basically did everything they could to infect as many people as possible. On top of that, the White House has refused to reveal when Trump last tested negative for the virus, declined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s assistance on contact tracing, and, in many instances, didn’t even tell people with whom the president had interacted that he’d tested positive, including the Joe Biden campaign and Gold Star families who attended an event at the White House (just in case his feelings about the troops were unclear). “This was disconcerting from a basic public health perspective,” said Jay Wolfson, the senior associate dean of the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida. “The danger here is [the administration] playing chicken with other people’s lives by not being transparent and not being clear.”

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