Every day more details come out..and more positives from the Rose Garden event where all guests were tested

And it makes the whole thing worse.

This notion that you can carry out rapid tests ever day and then go “All good” is nonsense https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-virus-spread-white-house/2020/10/02/38c5b354-04cc-11eb-b7ed-141dd88560ea_story.html

Melania and Donald Trump welcomes 150 guests to that Rose Garden event to introduce Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

They arrived wearing masks & given a rapid test (I think the WH uses Abbott tests) and, on being given a negative result, removed masks.

YEAH! They’d managed to move coronavirus off the map and got people talking about something else.

(Sounds familiar? Yes. The Tories are doing it too. Immigrants! Islands! Ferries! 40 Hospitals! Meanie EU!)

That negative test signalled “We’re good”. Hugging, handshaking. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1312064332306542592

Invincable.

It also shows how little they understand about the limitations of the test especially the rapid test. Those hyped PR accuracy messages need to be taken with a large mountain of salt. Operation Moonshot @JolyonMaugham

I guess we are having a living demonstration.

So we know Hope Hicks, Melania and Donald Trump, Kellayne Conway, Rev Jenkins from Barrett’s University Notre Dame, Mike Lee, Senator from Utah, Hope Hicks, Thom Tillis (RNC) , Ronna McDaniel (RNC) have all tested positive - so far.

The no mask mantra applied indoors as well.

3 journalists who attended the event have also tested positive.

Another staffer has also thought to have tested positive and that jerk Mike Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff who continues to address journalists maskless, saying - I kid you not - he has tested negative.

“We don’t want to be talking about Coronavirus (coming up to the election) but now we are talking about coronavirus”

If the President, with all the precautions and priviledged of daily testing, can get Coronavirus perhaps they can too.

He can’t even protect himself

They say Pence, Ivanka and Jared all tested negative on Friday (yesterday) but they should know by now that is no guarantee that they are not infected. The best window for accurate testing starts 5 days after contact.

And rapid tests are less accurate.

Whilst Pence works from home, Kushner was working in the White House on Friday

He isn’t quarantining.

Nor is Meadows.

Yet they have had pretty unequivocal proof that a negative test is not proof of being virus free.

Could it be they aren’t so bright? Risk takers.

It is the response, once a positive test from Hope Hicks was confirmed, that is truly astonishing.

People heard rumours on Wednesday rather than a formal, public and systematic process essential when so many people (many elderly) had been in contact.

Mask suddenly appeared.

Quietly people who had been in contact with Hicks were moved off the Bedminster trip including the Press Sec McEnerny.

But the trip itself with other Hicks’ contacts including Trump and Melania went ahead. Extraordinary.

And a breach of protocol.

Trump’s physician isn’t going to come out of this well.

Either he advised Trump not to attend and he holds no sway over him. OR he went along to get along against CDC advice, sharing that weak characteristic with Tory MPs that is causing so much damage here in the U.K.

In Bedminster there was a round table indoor fundraiser, unmasked, with plenty of elderly people present.

Frankel, a vitamins executive who touts hydroxycholoquine with Trump, was present.

There was also an outdoor event but some people wore masks.

Trump KNEW Hick’s diagnosis

He acknowledged it to fellow travellers on the return trip Marine One.

I can’t get my head around that.

But most people heard of it through a Bloomberg Press report. Including people present at the Rose Garden event.

Not through contact tracers

That includes Chris Christie, Ex New Jersey Governor, who not only attended the Rose Garden event but had been helping Trump with the Presidential Debate preparation inside the White House.

And how does the President try and deflect responsibility?

On the Sean Hannity show on Friday night, he tried to shift attention to soldiers, marines and policemen who, he said crowded up around Hicks.

“It’s very difficult” he whinged as if it had nothing to do with him.

Really quite despicable.

Not just Chris Christie (see him hugging at the Rose Garden event mouths and noses nice and close) but a journalist who had been travelling with the president that week AND who since tested positive also had not been contacted by contact tracers.

Back to the Rose Garden event.

It wasn’t just that they were rapid tested
They were actively told it was safe to remove masks.

Cabinet members, senators, Barrett’s family, family of the late Justice Scalia, Fox News Laura Ingraham were all mingling at close quarters - maskless

Something tells me this will go down in the annals of public health and virology testing as a case study of how not to do things.

Hubris. Failing to pay attention. No understanding that a negative test in the morning is no guarantee you won’t be positive in the afternoon.

What about the night before the Rose Garden event? An indoor fundraiser at the Washington, Trump International Hotel

Trump attended that with Eugene Scalia, Lobbyist Brian Ballard, McDaniel who tested positive on Wednesday. She had spent 2 days with the president.

She says she had told the White House doctor and White House officials of the positive test, before she had been able to inform the president personally on Friday. She had not been able to get through to him.

So Trump knew before Bedminster that he had been in close contact with TWO people who had tested positive. But went ahead anyway

AFTER the Barrett announcement he travelled to Middletown to hold a campaign rally.

Sunday - golf.

News conference at the WH

A reception for Gold Star parents

All the while meeting with Christie, Hicks, Conway, Giuliani and other advisers preparing for that appalling debate.

That’s what he delivers AFTER extensive preparation

And the Trumps circumnavigated the safety requirements AT the event. Arriving too late to be tested and refusing to wear masks.

I should think Biden is grateful for the 12’ 9” space between the podiums.

Fingers crossed.

In the Rose Garden on Monday afternoon, the president all but declared victory over the virus.
“Tremendous progress is being made,” he said. “I say, and I’ll say it all the time: We’re rounding the corner....

“And, very importantly, vaccines are coming, but we’re rounding the corner regardless.”

If he had paid more attention he might have heard the scientists whose advice he disregards & the virus whispering

“It’s the virus that is rounding the corner, claiming even more victories”

We can add Bill Stepien, Trump’s new campaign manager to the list. He travelled to Cleveland with Trump and also got into a car with Hope Hicks

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/03/politics/trump-campaign-manager-tests-positive/index.html