▲SomeoftheRepublicanPartymemberswho’vetestedpositiveforCovid:
DonaldTrump,HopeHicks,ThomTillis,KellyanneConway,KayleighMcEnany,
MikeLee,ChrisChristie,andRonnaMcDaniel
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◼ REMARKS Bloomberg Businessweek October 12, 2020
How the Virus Trumped the White House
people, you’re increasing opportunity to become infected,”
says Kate Grabowski, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins
University. Trump may have been lucky not to have been
infected earlier, she says.
Instead of social distancing, the White House has relied
on technology to fend off the virus. Its main line of defense
has been a rapid test from Abbott Laboratories. But tests like
these, as useful as they are in spotting cases early so people
can be isolated, were never intended to be the sole safeguard
against Covid and may have given a false sense of security.
While some White House staffers wore masks early on in the
pandemic, most stopped in the weeks after the president
ended his regular coronavirus briefings. “There are a lot of
important lessons from this, and one of them is that testing
in and of itself is not enough to keep the virus out,” says Tom
Frieden, a former director of the CDC.
That’s because patients become contagious before
they develop symptoms, and rapid tests won’t catch all of
these early cases until it’s too late. If just one patient with a
false-negative result slips through, a superspreader event can
quickly ensue. “It’s almost impossible to test often enough” to
catch all cases before they become contagious, says Graham
Snyder, medical director of infection prevention and hospital
epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“That is why masking and distancing are so important.”
The reliance on testing alone within the White House is
antibody cocktail from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., and
then, when his blood-oxygen level dipped for a second time,
they started him on a steroid treatment that’s usually reserved
for severe Covid cases. On his release, Trump’s doctors said he
wasn’t out of the woods yet; the illness can take a severe turn
7 to 10 days after symptoms appear. By Oct. 7, Trump had been
symptom-free for over 24 hours, his doctor said.
Given how many crowded events the president attended
the week he got sick, including rallies in two states and a fund-
raiser in a third—as well as hours of apparently mask-free prep
for his Sept. 29 debate with Democratic presidential nominee
Joe Biden—it’s not clear exactly how or when the virus spread
through the White House, and it may never be. What is clear
is that the White House, for months, has been ignoring basic
public-health precautions urged by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, such as limiting large gatherings,
wearing masks, and practicing social distancing.
At the Rose Garden event, rows were packed, people were
hugging and shaking hands, and few wore masks. But that
wasn’t anomalous: This summer, Trump held a rally inside
a Tulsa arena and gave a convention speech to 2,500 peo-
ple on the South Lawn of the White House. As his reelec-
tion campaign gained steam, de facto political rallies became
full outdoor rallies, which soon turned into indoor ones. All
featured Trump supporters largely maskless and packed
together. “Anytime you are increasing contact between
