It’s funny when people catch a deadly virus in the middle of a pandemic, so the media should make clever quips and have a laugh.
That’s according to Dave Perry, editor of the Sentinel in Aurora, where this joke probably made a big splash in his newsroom.
Looks like the White House has finally achieved herd mentality. #WhiteHouseVirus #TrumpCovid19 #copolitics https://t.co/1WXruCXz24
— Sentinel Editor Dave Perry (@EditorDavePerry) October 5, 2020
Get it? Hilarious.
You know what’s even funnier than the White House press secretary testing positive Monday for COVID-19?
Several members of the White House press corps testing positive Friday for the virus.
See how that’s not really funny at all, either?
The Washington Post covered it very somberly, pointing out the cramped conditions in the reporters work spaces, all of the people whom they come in contact with, but how it’s probably Trump’s fault, anyway.
The White House Correspondents’ Association urged its members to steer clear of the press room and the small warren of workspaces behind it inside the West Wing unless they have urgent business. In the first of several emails on Friday, the group’s president, Zeke Miller of the Associated Press, asked journalists who don’t have an enclosed office in the workspace and aren’t part of the press pool — the rotating group of reporters that follows the president and shares its reporting with other reporters — to stay away from the White House altogether.
New York Times correspondent Michael D. Shear, tested positive on Friday as did two other White House reporters who have declined to make their illness public because transparency ain’t their thing.
File photo before COVID-19 of the White House media office.
CNN has more on the outbreak:
A White House staffer who sits in the “lower press” area of the West Wing also received a confirmed positive result on Friday morning.
Reporters and White House spokespeople work together in cramped quarters, often meeting the definition of close contact.
So there is now widespread concern among White House reporters about who was exposed.
How the press secretary tested positive several days after an outbreak among reporters in the media gallery, that’s a real head-scratcher of a mystery.
What it’s not, is funny.