SF's Department of Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax minced no words in reacting to President Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, which was revealed late Thursday night.
Speaking to CBSN Bay Area this morning, Colfax said, "From Day One of this pandemic, the president has disregarded the science, data, and facts. This has created an unprecedented public health catastrophe that we know was preventable. Now it has caught up with the president and it has caught up with his administration."
Colfax added, "This virus isn't political, and wearing masks shouldn't be political."
The president is likely to receive some of the best medical care available on the planet, Colfax said, but "the same can not be said for the near quarter million of Americans who have died from this virus, including the 847 who died just yesterday."
"Outrageously," Colfax says, he's hearing that White House staff continue not wearing masks today despite the situation with multiple people testing positive.
Colfax was visibly angry throughout his remarks over a video call, especially as he said it was "entirely plausible that members of the public have been put at risk due to the denial on the part of the most powerful man in the world.
Writing in the New York Times this morning, Frank Bruni similarly was exasperated with the fact that our automaton Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany "maskless, held a briefing with reporters after [Hope] Hicks’s infection with the virus was confirmed and after McEnany was on a plane with her and exposed to her." McEnany was on Fox News today assuring everyone that the President is okay and still working from his quarantine in the White House.
As the New York Times reports, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have tested negative so far, and so have Barron Trump and the Pences. Also testing positive on Friday was GOP Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who sits on the Judiciary Committee. He met with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Tuesday, and said he began having allergy-like symptoms on Thursday.
Top photo: Trump taking out his mask during Tuesday's debate in Cleveland, to prove he sometimes wears one. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)