The president has disdained precautions in a variety of indoor settings
- Murhaf Radi, Europe Editor
- Oct 4, 2020
- 1 min read
The coronavirus can linger in the air in tiny particles. The president has disdained precautions in a variety of indoor settings.
On Saturday, President Trump met with Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the nominee to the Supreme Court, and others in the Oval Office. On Tuesday, he debated former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in an indoor hall, neither with a mask, talking at high volume and often without pause, published the New York Times.
On Wednesday, Trump traveled to and from Minnesota on Air Force One along with dozens of others. On Thursday, the president appeared indoors before hundreds of supporters at a golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
On none of these occasions was the president wearing a mask. Often, neither were many in the room or on the airplane with him. All in all, conditions like these are a recipe for so-called super-spreader events, in which a single infected person transmits the virus to dozens of others, research has shown.
“The White House has been flouting the basic rules of public health for a very long time,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Regarding the president’s diagnosis that he was infected with the coronavirus, he added, “there are no surprises here.”
The problem is one scientists have been warning about for months: airborne transmission. In addition to the heavy droplets sneezed or coughed out by infected people, research has shown the coronavirus may drift in the air indoors, held aloft in tiny particles called aerosols.
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