momadance wrote:Barr is self quarantining.

JFLNYC wrote:That fat tub of seditious goo.

The Dude wrote:It’s used for inflammation. JFL said he uses it. We have no idea what’s going on right now. If he was in dire straits and they were using it it seems hard to believe we’d be seeing him every day

TenuredVulture wrote:

Werthless wrote:His family is not going away either. It will be like Sarah Palin times two.

The palins have gone away.

CalvinBall wrote:Not a doctor but dont think it's healthy to pump someone full of stuff they don't need

CFP wrote:This guy saw his oxygen levels drop twice in recent days, is being drugged with all kinds of stuff, and is going to walk out of the hospital tomorrow? I don’t think so.

Werthless wrote:

CFP wrote:This guy saw his oxygen levels drop twice in recent days, is being drugged with all kinds of stuff, and is going to walk out of the hospital tomorrow? I don’t think so.

Serious question, I suppose, but do they have at least one of the thousand rooms in the White House configured for healthcare support? I would expect that the President of the United States of America should be able to receive good care at home.

The Dude wrote:It’s used for inflammation. JFL said he uses it. We have no idea what’s going on right now. If he was in dire straits and they were using it it seems hard to believe we’d be seeing him every day

gr wrote:Also too much at stake for the party to do that.

But there is one person who was exposed to someone with COVID in the days before the Rose Garden event: Donald Trump.

Trump traveled with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel Thursday and Friday of last week. She apparently began experiencing symptoms “earlier this week”, according to a source who spoke to Politico. The Politico story notes McDaniel got her positive test on Wednesday afternoon. If she tested in response to her own symptoms that puts the onset of illness at Tuesday at the latest. But the article says it was “after a member of her family tested positive.” So there is the apparent chain that gets McDaniel sick.

In any case, McDaniel’s infection and illness seem to precede most or all of the people in the White House cluster. This seems very likely if she tested early in the week. Critically, McDaniel was not at the White House event. She was at home in Michigan on that Saturday and hasn’t left her home since. (To retrace the timeline: McDaniel travels with Trump on Thursday and Friday, went home on Saturday and hasn’t left home since.) Given the timeline it seems quite likely that McDaniel had already been infected by the time she traveled with the President. She apparently tested negative before meeting with him on both days. But that is likely a reference to the rapid saliva tests which have high failure rates. They’re first line surveillance, far from proof that someone isn’t ill or infectious.

Perhaps the whole the thing is a coincidence and the two things have nothing to do with each other. But it seems fairly likely that the President spent time last last week with someone in the early stages of being COVID positive. And there’s just enough time for him to have been infected by McDaniel late in the last week of September and be generating a significant viral load in time for the Saturday White House event.

Hope Hicks was apparently also on that trip. So she could just as likely be the spreader; perhaps both are. There are likely to have been other less known figures who were traveling with the President and also at the Saturday event. We just don’t know which of these people might have tested positive.