Day 205…
Quarantine - Day 5
Last night I was on a very long zoom call that went very late into the wee hours of the morning.
At about midnight, we took a break and I saw a news alert on my phone that said that Hope Hicks, one of the closest aides to the President, had tested positive for the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, Hicks had gone to Cleveland on Air Force One with the President for the debate. On Wednesday, she continued on with him to Minnesota for a rally and, there, began to feel sick. She reportedly quarantined aboard Air Force One on the flight back to Washington, but it’s unclear how exactly she did that.
Despite the fact that he knew he had potentially been exposed to the virus by Hicks, the President nonetheless attended a fundraising event yesterday at one of his clubs in Bedminster, New Jersey. As the Marine One helicopter was leaving Washington, the President apparently received word that Hicks had, indeed, tested positive. The White House Operations Office deemed the trip safe, however, and so they continued.
At the event, the President was indoors with 15 people around a table - none of whom were wearing masks. There were an additional 200 or so people outside that he addressed as well. People who were there said that he seemed hoarse and lethargic.
Hours later, Bloomberg News reported on Hick’s infection which is the first time any word of this went public. The news did not come from the White House.
In an interview on Fox news later in the evening, the President said that he had heard that Hicks had tested positive. He then tweeted that he and the First Lady had been tested and were awaiting the results.
We finished our break and went back to the zoom call for another two hours. When we finally finished, there were more alerts on our phones.
Just before 1am, the President had tweeted, “Tonight, FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this together.”
My niece has gotten me somewhat hooked on a TV show called Supernatural. It is kind of a cross between Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, X-Files and Dukes of Hazard.
I’m not really recommending this show to anybody, but for me it’s kind of perfect. It’s interesting enough to watch, the two leads are cute after all, but it’s not so interesting or complex that I can’t do other things while it’s on. It’s a perfect show to exercise and stretch to. I can sort receipts, pay bills and go through stuff and not feel that it needs my full attention. The best part of it is that there are 320 episodes of it, and I am only on about episode 14. It will definitely last through to the end of this quarantine.
Michael and I have similar tastes in much of what we watch so there are very few things that he is happy for me to watch without him. Science fiction, horror and fantasy-based shows hold almost no interest for him at all. I, on the other hand, eat that stuff up. My inner 14-year-old self has never really moved on.
The shows that we watch together are far more complex and character driven. They are much better written.
A successful show has to plan for the long term. There have to be peaks and valleys in the action. Too many peaks or too many valleys and we get bored.
It used to be that producers looked for a big “wow” moment every ten minutes in a blockbuster action movie. If you watch that kind of film with that in mind, you will see that that is true. The same thing happens in a musical. Scenes only go on so long before there has to be a song. The audience gets restless when the gap between them gets too big.
The best kind of “wow” moment in any narrative is something that completely changes the direction that the story is taking.
We are all now living through what is, in essence, an extremely complex and layered television series. The experience of watching real life unfold on TV is not at all different from watching a fictional story unfold. We have watched our country’s various crisis unfold and start to pile up on each other.
The President and First Lady contracting COVID-19 is a huge “wow” moment. The entire story has now veered off on another completely different tangent and none of us really know what direction the story is now going to take.
We had an expectation that the next month leading up to the election was pretty much going to follow the same path that it has been on. There was still the suspense of not knowing who is going to win and what the players will then do when the results are known, but we were pretty much on a straight line to that end.
No more. The story of this election has just changed.
At 2am, after the call, when I should have gone to bed, I instead clicked around the news channels looking for what all of this might mean. Despite all of the talk by various health officials and pundits, the answer is that absolutely nobody knows.
Facebook went insane. The prevailing sense last night is that nobody trusts this. I certainly don’t believe that we have been or will be given the full truth. Between 2am and 4am a whole slew of conspiracy theories exploded into being. I finally shut everything down and went to sleep.
This morning, in the light of day, it all seems to be somewhat calmer, but there is still no clear answer about where this story is heading.
The White House never notified Joe Biden after the debate that the President had been exposed to the virus.
The President’s entire family watched the debate without masks and all of them were sitting close to each other.
Joe and Jill Biden have both tested negative as have the President’s sons, daughter and son-in-law. All of the President and his family’s scheduled events, though, have now been postponed or will be done online.
Joe Biden has said that he is going to continue forward with his scheduled campaign appearances after pausing while waiting for the test results.
Testing negative today does not mean that any of these people won’t test positive in the next 5-7 days. They could all have it now and it might not show up yet.
The Abbot test that the White House uses is only about 85% accurate. It is the test of choice, however, because the results come relatively quickly. One can only hope that they will now also use more accurate tests that take longer to determine the results of.
Ronna McDaniel, the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, tested positive for the virus this past Wednesday. She was last with the President the Friday before.
Less than a week ago, the President held a ceremony in the Rose Garden to announce his nominee to the Supreme Court. Five people who attended that mask-less, non-socially distanced event have now tested positive for the virus.
Among them is Republican Senator Mike Lee. There is film footage of him greeting and hugging people without a mask.
University of Notre Dame President Reverend John Jenkins has also tested positive. He was at the event because the Supreme Court nominee is an alumna of Notre Dame.
The nominee, herself, actually had the virus during this past summer and, obviously, survived it. She tested negative this morning, but she spent a lot of time without a mask in proximity to all of these people.
Earlier today It was also announced that a White House journalist and a press staffer have also tested positive.
All of this, and STILL, by all accounts this morning, staffers at the White House are not wearing masks. White House journalists from several outlets are reporting seeing staffers continuing to engage in dangerous social behaviors despite the fact that their boss, the President of the United States has now, himself, become infected.
ALL of these people should be in quarantine for the next two weeks. The fact that they aren’t doing this now almost guarantees that there are going to be more cases developing in the next few weeks.
The President is reporting mild symptoms. We may never know whether that’s true or not. He is in some of the highest risk categories. He is male. He is old. He is obese and he has high cholesterol. Even with that, statistically, he is more likely to survive this than die from it.
Typically, the symptoms he and the First Lady are experiencing now will last for about a week. After that? That’s where the respiratory issues can start - shortness of breath. If that happens and starts getting severe then that will lead to hospitalization. Until then, there is little to be done other than bed rest and observation.
There are all sorts of discussions about what could happen if the President should become incapacitated or even perish.
In terms of the Administration, the Vice President would assume the office. At the moment, he is testing negative, but, again, it’s too early to tell. He could be infected and not know for another week.
If he should be incapacitated as well then Speaker of the House Pelosi, in theory, would take over. There are some constitutional law experts, however, who say that the Secretary of State could challenge that and assume the office himself.
Dick Cheney, G.W. Bush’s vice president, apparently wrote a letter of resignation that he entrusted to a colleague. In the event that something happened to the President and then to him, his resignation would mean that he would need to be replaced and his replacement would assume the Presidency. That would bypass having to go to the Speaker of the House. It would be interesting to know if our current Vice President has done the same thing.
In terms of the election, should something happen to the nominee, the party could appoint a new candidate, but it is not at all certain how that person would be added to the ballot when the election is only four weeks away. People could continue to vote for him with the understanding that they are, in essence, voting for the party and then rely on the party to choose a replacement.
Remember, we aren’t voting for the candidates directly, we are voting for members of the electoral college to represent our choice in the final balloting. The members of the electoral college could make that call.
A good TV series keeps you attuned and attentive.
This particular series is, at times, a bit hard to follow. It is filed with characters who lie and deceive so you can never fully trust what is really going on. What it isn’t, is boring. Relentless and overwhelming maybe, but not boring.
For today, though, I’ve had enough of it. I am switching over to Supernatural. At least there, the demon or evil spirit usually gets vanquished by the end of the episode in a satisfyingly gory way. Unlike our current real-life series, no matter how difficult a position our two handsome heroes get into, we know they are going to get out of it.
What makes our real-life series so excruciating, is that we have NO idea where it’s really going.
How is it all going to end?
Who knows? We will just have to wait and see.
best soap opera I have ever watched
Friday’s episode leaving you breathless until Monday
Watch Kiss the Ground on Netflix
a solution xx