November 18, 2020: Rep. Doug Young Gets COVID

 

11/18/20: Donald J. Trump, who lusts after a second term, is spending the end of his first in hiding.

 

Once again, he has no public events scheduled today.

 

*

Rep. Doug Young.

 

“It’s not nearly as deadly as the other viruses we have.”

 

SADLY, while the president hides and pouts, the corner he says we turned on COVID leads us right back down Infection Street.

 

In the last week, eight members of Congress have tested positive. At greatest risk may be Sen. Chuck Grassley, 87. The elderly Iowa Republican attended a meeting with other GOP leaders on Monday and tested positive Tuesday. Seven members of the House, Reps. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., Don Young, R-Alaska, Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., Tim Walberg, R-Mich. and incoming Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, have also been infected. 

 

Rep. Young, also 87, and just re-elected for a 25^th term, has been one of those who insisted that it’s up to the individual to show responsibility and wear a mask. Young has been reluctant.

 

It was no surprise when he ended up in a hospital for three days. In fact, you could say Young went down swinging (and missing), after speaking to other Alaska seniors last week. “They call it the coronavirus. I call it the beer virus. How do you like that? It attacks us senior citizens. I’m one of you,” Young joked. “I still say we have to as a nation and state go forth with everyday activities.”

 

Yes, go forth with everyday activities, such as 911 calls, ambulance rides to the hospital, and trips to the morgue!

 

Young proved to be singularly ill-informed, telling his audience that the deadliness of the virus has been “blown out of proportion.” He insisted, “it’s not nearly as deadly as the other viruses we have. Whether you realize it or not, we are at war now,” he told his audience. “But mostly because of the presentations by the mass media.”

 

So, let’s see what the “mass media” is saying. According to experts at CDC: the U.S. piled up 164,382 cases of COVID-19 on November 17. And 1,602 Americans died as a result of “presentations by the mass media.”

 

Total deaths reported by the Center for Disease Control, from the “beer virus:”

 

247,834.

 

As far as his own bout of sickness, Rep. Young admitted Monday that it had been hard. “Very frankly,” he said in an email to a reporter, “I had not felt this sick in a very long time.” 

 

Young had gone forth with his “everyday activities,” including a birthday party at the Little Italy restaurant in Anchorage on Nov. 6, where he was photographed without a mask. Several prominent Republicans who attended, Young included, soon tested positive for the virus. Former Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell was another. “Well, I think I’m going to live,” Treadwell, 64, told Alaska Public Radio. “I’ve had a cough coming from pretty much every part of my respiratory system. And what is it now? Early afternoon. I want to go back to bed.”

 

So, “go forth with everyday activities,” American people. Maybe you can end up in the hospital for three days, like Rep. Young.

 

(Since he’s a member of Congress, we, the taxpayers, paid his bills.)

 

Or, as cases spiked across Alaska, you could listen to the warning issued by the governor instead. “No matter what you believe about the virus, the facts are the facts,” said Gov. Mike Dunleavy, also a Republican. “Hospitalizations and sick health-care workers are reaching untenable levels.”

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Even many GOP lawmakers are taken aback by the president’s decision to fire Chris Krebs. (See: 11/17/20).

 

Sen. Shelly Moore Capito had intended to meet with the head of DHS cybersecurity on Wednesday. “I was going to tell him thank you for a good job,” she told reporters. “I’m still going to tell him that – just not today.”

 

Capito said she was “disappointed” and flummoxed by the president’s personnel decisions: “I can’t explain it.”

 

(I can: this is Trump being Trump, a giant dick acting like a giant dick.)

 

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called Trump’s move a “terrible mistake,” adding that Krebs is “an extraordinary talent who does a superb job overseeing the protection of our cyber capabilities.”

 

“It’s the president’s prerogative, but I think it just adds to the confusion and chaos,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, admitted to reporters. “And I’m sure I’m not the only one that would like some return to a little bit more of a – I don’t even know what’s normal anymore.”