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While everyone was busy with Halloween preparations and Joe Biden busy stumbling his way from Rome to Scotland, White House press secretary Jen Psaki decided to casually drop the news that she was diagnosed with COVID-19.
And not only that, she’s been in quarantine since last Wednesday.
Sharing full statement and grateful I am vaccinated and for the amazing Biden team pic.twitter.com/QDokXo47dK
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) October 31, 2021
Now, while I can wish Psaki a speedy recovery (along with whomever in her immediate family has fallen ill), her claim that she is disclosing her illness as “an abundance of transparency” is an absolute joke.
First, depending on how the contact tracing went, and if the Psaki family member was symptomatic or not, Joe Biden was likely exposed long enough to Jen Psaki to warrant, at his age, a quarantine of his own. After all, vaccination status doesn’t make a hill of beans’ worth of difference when it comes to many school quarantines, and the recent study that both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated can easily contract COVID when it is in your own immediate household should have been a HUGE red flag. Also, I looked up the weather for Washington DC for last Tuesday, when Psaki says she met the president outdoors and was six feet away and wearing a mask. It was quite wet and stormy last Tuesday. You’re telling me that the Biden administration let the elderly man sit outside for a meeting with the press secretary in that weather? Yes, I’m sure they sat under some kind of cover. You really think Biden can understand a word being said to him through a mask at a six foot distance while it is rainy and windy? Call me skeptical.
Also, let’s just say that Biden’s masking protocol is… problematically inconsistent.
Joe Biden showed up with a mask, walked away without it, and coughed into his hand before shaking hands with prominent Democrats at his event in New Jersey pic.twitter.com/FiMTGr70WI
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) October 25, 2021
But the White House, knowing that Jen Psaki had spent time with the president on Tuesday, right before a family member was positively diagnosed on Wednesday, still sent him to Rome to meet with THE POPE and didn’t bother making him wear a mask.
Now, the White House claims that Biden tested negative on Saturday. At this point, we all know that the rules only apply to the little people. The White House staff can get tested daily and still do their jobs instead of quarantining after exposure to Jen Psaki, but if your kid has a classmate with COVID-19, they get sent home and can’t come back to school until the mandated quarantine time is over. This is all so ridiculous.
But what is really worse is what Jen Psaki just did to the entire White House press corps. Those daily pressers are indoors, and Psaki does not wear a mask. Ever. After all, she’s on TV, and she’s special, so while the rest of the press room must wear a mask, she stands at the podium, unmasked, every single time. And she gave a press briefing ON WEDNESDAY, the same day that she started her quarantine. And its clear that she had zero intention of ever revealing that she had skipped the trip to Europe due to quarantining, as she was still issuing press releases AFTER she was quarantined.
when did @PressSec notify all the journos she talks with every day without a mask on that she was at home quarantining? https://t.co/6BCNUUdTZH
— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) October 31, 2021
So, what will the press corps have to say to Psaki after she finishes her quarantine, and has to stand before all of them again, knowing that she exposed them all in an enclosed press room while she stood in front of them, unmasked? The press has given Psaki a huge pass during her tenure as press secretary on so many things. Will anyone, save Peter Doocy, even DARE to make a reference to it?
Now, it is highly likely that Psaki has contracted COVID through the constant exposure to whomever it was in her household who came down with it, and that she might not have actually contracted it herself until quarantine started, and she was around whomever it was all the time. (We know it couldn’t have been her kindergartener, because Psaki told us that she was TOTALLY FINE wearing a mask all day at school. This is sarcasm.) Regardless, these are the rules, and Psaki isn’t disclosing her positive test to be “transparent.” She’s doing it to cover her ass, just in case another case pops up in the White House and it can be contact traced back to her.
Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click
Thankfully, masks are a full 4-6% effective. That makes them 96-94% ineffective.
So what if Psaki and Biden wore masks.
Jim says: Psaki was not likely contagious until two days before her positive test. So her contacts Wednesday were likely safe. I hope Peter D. doesn’t bring it up.
I think “full transparency,” though, is to tell everyone you are in quarantine, and not wait until isolation. In addition, while in quarantine, you should wear a mask until your test comes back neg. If pos, you actually can wear a mask in public if vaccinated. The big issue, in my opinion, is the household contacts. Was everyone within the household isolating? It seems they were passing it around. This extends quarantine periods for all. Psaki now has her isolation term defined. Fortunately, vaccination + COVID will give her a strong immunity. Infection alone gives a variable immune response, although we don’t know what is the effective minimum. There is data that vaccination plus infection is pretty strong. But let’s face it. Natural immunity is the likely reason that delta is dying. How else can we explain falling numbers during school and when everyone is back inside?
[…] too dangerous for them to be packed in there with Jen Psaki (who never wears a face mask and has exposed them all to COVID herself in the recent past)? Omicron, as we have said repeatedly, is highly contagious, […]
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