Participants in Amy Coney Barrett's introduction were encouraged to take off their masks and mingle

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/3/1983138/-Amy-Barrett-s-introduction-has-emerged-as-a-superspreader-event-that-may-affect-her-confirmation

Participants in Amy Coney Barrett's introduction were encouraged to take off their masks and mingle
Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
Saturday October 03, 2020 · 9:31 AM EDT


A day after Donald Trump admitted to testing positive for COVID-19, the Rose Garden ceremony formally introducing Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee for the Supreme Court has emerged as a super-spreader event. In addition to Trump, at least 11 others — including former White House press secretary Kellyanne Conway, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, Republican Senator Mike Lee, and Republican Senator Thom Tillis have tested positive following Barrett’s introduction. While others—including Hope Hicks, who did not appear at the event, it seems clear that this was the nexus of transmission. At that event one week ago, someone had an active case of COVID-19, and it spread.

It spread because, as The Washington Post notes, the event was treated like “a triumphal flashback to the Before Times.” Though some guests—notably those who sat near the back of the affair—chose to wear masks, most of those front and center came in mask-free. There was also little effort to demonstrate any form of social distancing, with ecstatic Republicans hugging, shaking hands, and generally celebrating at close range their hunger to replace a legendary Supreme Court Justice who was at that moment still awaiting her funeral.

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The contrast between what the Post called the “carefree, cavalier attitude toward the virus on display in the Rose Garden last Saturday” and the somber roll call of test results a week later is shocking, but what happened at the White House was only one of thousands of such outbreaks that have happened across the nation. And no matter what they apparently believed, no one is immune.

The red death had long devastated the country. … But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court …


— From Edgar Allan Poe’s, “Masque of the Red Death”