A third Mar-A-Lago guest whose visit to the resort coincided with Donald Trump has now tested positive for COVID-19.
Brazil’s acting ambassador to the United States is the third Mar-a-Lago guest last weekend to test positive for the coronavirus. Nestor Forster dined with Donald Trump last Saturday night at the president’s golf resort in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Bolsonaro’s communications secretary, Fabio Wajngarten, who was a guest at Mar-a-Lago the same weekend, also tested positive. He didn’t dine with Trump, but posed for a picture with the president.
Yet another guest who tested positive attended a Sunday fundraising lunch hosted by Trump Victory, a committee that raises money for Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, according to an email from GOP officials, The Washington Post reported. Party officials said the person had no direct contact with Trump.
This count does not include President Bolsonaro himself, who has reportedly tested positive, but denies that report.
Miami’s Mayor, Francis Suarez, who also met with Brazil President Bolsonaro’s group, has also tested positive.
Senators Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott have announced that they are both under self-quarantine after news of Wajngarten’s positive test result. Even if they do not show symptoms of COVID-19, this helps prevent the spread to others, as there is evidence that COVID-19 can be transmitted by people before showing any symptoms and even never showing symptoms.
In a Friday COVID-19 press conference where Trump shook hands with several of the individuals present, Trump denied being tested for the virus, and while he suggested he might get tested in the future, the White House’s physician sent out a note that for the time being, Trump wouldn’t get tested, or quarantined.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people who are 60 and older, such as the President, stay at home as much as possible. Trump has also ignored guidance from health officials to stop shaking hands.
In a recent post, I brought up the concept of super-spreaders — people who infect a disproportionate number of their contacts during an outbreak — which have played a role in previous outbreaks, and evidence showing that they may be playing a role in COVID-19’s spread as well.
As the examples from the studies on super-spreaders in previous outbreaks, and the case of Typhoid Mary show, there are likely a lot of factors that go into whether a person disproportionately infects a large number of contacts. Whether or not you are actually infected, obviously, plays a big role in becoming one of these so-called super-spreaders.
But once there is a strong possibility that you have been infected, the willingness to continue with your same habits and behaviors, without any attempts at preventing spreading the virus, is just as obvious a serious problem waiting to burst forth.
With what we already know about how disease infection occurs and spreads, knowing that there have already been so many direct and indirect contacts with those infected and Trump and his inner circle, it makes sense to expect more cases of possible contact like this may end up being reported.
But with each new case, it makes Trump and his regime’s refusal to get tested, or even to help prevent the spread even within their own close contact with others, increasingly an alarming problem.