Just a few notes about items relating to the Covid epidemic sweeping through the top ranks of the Republican party. I think some of these might be a pace or two off a well worn reporting path.
I. The Rose Garden event in which Trump announced that Amy Coney Barrett was his Supreme Court nominee appears to have been a super-spreader event: all the intransigent cultists sitting shoulder to shoulder, hardly anyone wearing masks, and then embracing and glad-handing one another after the ceremony. Probably there were other receptions and such, indoors, as well. I don't know how many attendees have now tested positive, but enough so that Father John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, where Barrett is on the law school faculty, is receiving scant attention. He was among the Rose Garden attendees not wearing a mask and he's now tested positive for Covid. At least the young journalists at Notre Dame are on the case. From an editorial in the student newspaper, titled "Frankly, this is embarrassing":
Notre Dame students are prohibited from gathering in large groups or removing their masks in public regardless of their surveillance test results. Students, faculty and staff are discouraged from leaving campus or gathering in large groups off-campus, which is exactly what Jenkins did Saturday in D.C. Further, students have been threatened with severe disciplinary action for being photographed without masks in groups far smaller than the one gathered in the Rose Garden.
It appears Jenkins made a conscious and deliberate decision to not wear a mask, thereby jeopardizing the health and safety of himself, those at the event and all those in the tri-campus and South Bend communities with whom he interacted after the ceremony.
[Snip]
Jenkins leaving South Bend to flagrantly disobey his own rules while the community he is supposed to lead is suffering creates a sense of separation between himself and everyone else. A "do as I say, not as I do" mentality is not one a University president should have in a time of crisis.
Three cheers for the student journalists going after the president of their school! I was an editor on the school paper in college and can't remember us ever daring to criticize the president. In our defense, he never did anything this dumb.
II. Rose Garden celebrants now in quarantine with Covid include two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee—Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina. Two other GOP senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, are on record opposing a confirmation vote before the election. Yet another, Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, just tested positive too. There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, 47 Democrats (counting Independents who caucus with the Dems). On the Judiciary Committee, there are 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. So far as I know, the wussy, mask-wearing Dems are all Covid-free. Five from 53 is 48, which is less than a majority of the full Senate and a number insufficient to form a quorum. Two from 12 is 10, not a majority of the Judiciary Committee, either.
Is the plan to jam through Barrett to her lifetime appointment by a vote over videoconference? Or perhaps to violate public health recommendations regarding quarantine periods? If Barrett's confirmation is to be achieved before the election, those seem like the options, but I haven't seen or heard much discussion of such questions. I will note that, if the recent past is a guide to the near future, any imminent coronavirus afflictions will most likely strike within the manly Republican caucus.
It would be a world-historical Karmic victory if Republicans, on account of their absurd and feckless Covid posturing, fail to get Barrett onto the Supreme Court.
III. The presser around the noon hour today, during which Trump's medical team updated his condition, had a few much discussed lowlights. If, as stated, the president is 72 hours into his Covid fight, it would mean he traveled to Duluth for a mostly maskless rally and then on to Bedminster, New Jersey, for some indoor fund raising with donors after he knew he had Covid. After the presser, we were told "72 hours" was a slip-up—the doctor meant to say Trump was "3 days into it." But this doesn't work either unless day 1 was Thursday, and Trump announced he was ill by a tweet issued around 1 eastern time on Friday morning. When asked whether Trump had received supplemental oxygen, the doctor equivocated: "not today," "not when we were attending yesterday," etc. It's as if everyone in Trump's orbit is afflicted with a thick tongue and a compulsion to lie. The doctor, less experienced than others, wasn't any good at it, so now we know Trump was treated yesterday for low oxygen levels—not because the doctor said so, but because the doctor was such a poor liar.
My favorite part of the presser, though it seems to have received comparatively little attention, came when a reporter asked whether the president had been treated with hydroxychloroquine. This is the drug that Trump and his affiliated numbskulls have touted as a coronavirus killer—sometimes as a prophylactic, sometimes as a treatment for the disease . . . they say anything, just running their mouths. Anyway, the answer was that Trump had brought up the subject of hydroxychloroquine, which was then "discussed" but, in the end, "not administered." That would be because it's been proven ineffective.
When Trump is himself sick, he gets the best treatment from doctors who know the most about coronavirus. But before he's sick, he for some reason thinks it's the president's job to recommend treatments to the rest of us. Who even knows where he gets his goofy notions? The current chief coronavirus adviser in the administration is Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist who has no expertise in public health or infectious diseases. Atlas, however, was happy to go on Fox News and spout off about his contrarian views on coronavirus, which of course explains why he is now working for the administration. He's good enough to advise Trump about Covid but not good enough to treat Trump for Covid—that would be dangerous! Since he's not an expert, his role must be restricted to advising about what's best for the rest of us.
IV. First thing I saw this morning was the news about Kellyanne Conway. Fortunately, I'd already abandoned my pathetic effort to resist the siren call of Schadenfreude as one cultist after another shuffles off to quarantine. I think it was WC Fields who said he liked to give in to temptation immediately, thereby saving a lot of time.
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