The Coronavirus has yet to seemingly be actually contained within the United States, where cases have shot up to more than 550 and counting, with 22 deaths. One of those with the virus attended the very high-profile Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, where they may have exposed none other than longtime top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway herself to the potentially serious illness. At that same event, they’d already been confirmed to have exposed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — not exactly a low-profile figure! — who’s responded by essentially quarantining themselves for a couple of weeks, just to be safe.
The Kellyanne Conway reveal comes from journalist Raheem Kassam. As they explain, based on confirmed contacts, the infected individual was around the conference’s green room for at least a significant period on Thursday afternoon, and there’s a slew of prominent speakers who’d also have been around the same green room for that same period — including Conway. Another on the list, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), has responded by revealing that he and a few of his top staffers are quarantining themselves out of an abundance of caution.
Here are some of the other people who may have been in the green room on Thursday afternoon at the same time as the CPAC #coronavirus infectee:
– Rep Louie Gohmert;
– Ronna McDaniel
– Michael Knowles
– Kay James
– KellyAnne Conway
– Betsy Devos
– Rep Matt Gaetz
– Diamond/Silk— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) March 9, 2020
Besides that green room exposure, the sick attendee apparently also attended CPAC events for Shabbat on the weekend. As many have pointed out, there’s a deep irony in the Coronavirus exposure rocking the event because some of the remarks from featured speakers criticized media coverage of the situation as just a tool that Democrats wanted to use to bludgeon the president’s reputation. Trump himself has made similar claims, insisting — without evidence — that negative Coronavirus coverage is just a conspiracy against him, and his son, Don Jr., has taken the idea so far that he publicly claimed — again without evidence — that Democrats want the virus to infect “millions” of Americans.
CPAC, which today confirmed an attendee was infected with coronavirus, is where then-acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney accused the press of hyping coronavirus, which he described as a media ploy to try to bring down Trump.
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) March 8, 2020
Outside the realm of their outlandish Trumpian fantasies, the U.S. has only just recently been getting Coronavirus testing underway at a large scale. A vaccine is still far from availability, but in the meantime, over $8 billion in emergency funding to deal with the situation through other means has been approved.
