If anyone wants to terrify themselves, venture out into generalized Twitter or Facebook – as opposed to the progressive slice we all take – and take in some of the MAGA posts about masks being stupid, the whole thing being a hoax, that it’s all nothing, 500,000 killed isn’t really that bad, knowing nearly nothing about the millions of walking-wounded post-COVID patients with scarred lungs and damaged hearts, all that. It makes one yearn to get that vaccination in the arm and hope that just enough people, perhaps 75% of Americans, come to their senses such that firm herd immunity takes hold.

Dr. Fauci has certainly had enough of the MAGAs.  Yesterday, he admitted that he has been scared of getting COVID as an 80-year-old man having to travel so much, and he was especially scared of having to go to the White House under Trump. Of course, he would be scared. At various points, the White House functioned as “COVID-19 Central Headquarters USA.” From Huffpo:

The 80-year-old Fauci, who serves as chief medical adviser to the president, told Axios.com that he occasionally feared contracting Covid-19 when he visited the White House when Donald Trump was president. 

“I didn’t fixate on that, but it was in the back of my mind because I had to be out there,” he said. “I mean, particularly when I was going to the White House every day when the White House was sort of a super-spreader location.”

Case in point: After an event Trump held in September to celebrate the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, where few wore masks or socially distanced, about three dozen people with ties to the White House and Capitol Hill ended up testing positive for the coronavirus.

It is not funny. But it took Donald Trump to make the White House look so ridiculously irresponsible and dangerous. Previous to Donald Trump, people would have assumed that the White House would function as one of the safest places in the world, every single precaution taken to keep the president healthy and alive.

We know that Trump had to have overruled the Secret Service because the Secret Service knows that the virus is actually no different than a person with a gun. Secret Service agents put themselves in front of bullets for a president, they damned sure would have had everyone in an N-95 mask and no one within ten feet of the president. It would have been safe.

But under Trump, Dr. Fauci felt scared. He didn’t “fixate” on it for the same reason that professional soldiers don’t “fixate” on getting shot. They do their jobs. That’s what makes soldiers, the Secret Service, and Dr. Fauci better people than most of us. They are willing to take a very significant risk. It is simply sad that, under Donald Trump, Dr. Fauci knew the White House to be one of the most dangerous places he had to visit. But we totally believe him.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak