Since Donald Trump announced that he and the first lady had tested positive for COVID-19, each passing day has brought news of additional White House staffers or members of the Republican Party who have also contracted the highly contagious virus. For anyone who knows how the coronavirus works—a group that seemingly does not include the president, his employees, or his supporters—this is in no way shocking. Trump has flouted CDC guidelines for months, staffers have followed suit by not wearing masks, and he attended a a fundraiser the same day he began experiencing symptoms. And now, three days after checking into Walter Reed for a case that his own chief of staff told reporters was very serious, the president is apparently heading back to the White House to take out the people he hasn’t yet infected:
So just to break this down: The 209,000 people in the U.S. who have died of the coronavirus probably would have preferred it not to “dominate” their lives. But it did, in that they’re dead, because a certain president let the virus run rampant throughout the country while he was publicly lying about how dangerous it was. Also, the millions who are currently suffering from it don’t get to have their own team of doctors tending to them, or experimental drugs, or even, in some cases, supplemental oxygen. (At the height of the pandemic, many were told to stay home and not go to the hospital for help unless symptoms were severe.) As for feeling better than he did 20 years ago, as Dr. Eugene Gu notes, “that’s probably because of [the] dexamethasone high that resembles mania,” which was on full display this morning.
Meanwhile, Trump’s return to the White House is now likely putting hundreds of people once again at risk—from janitors to cooks to security—because he needs to prove he’s not “weak,” or something. And despite now having personal experience with COVID-19, apparently he still doesn’t know how it works, i.e. that he’s still contagious.
In related news, Typhoid Donald thinks the press was prepared to run front-page stories about how he had a lot of nerve not recklessly endangering the Secret Service for a photo op:
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