Arsenio Hall had a segment on his show titled “Things that make you go Hmmm.”
It would poke fun at everyday things that did not make sense. Given our society there was plenty of material to use.
I look at the world with a physician viewpoint. There are a lot of things that I see that make me go “Hmmm.”
A few weeks ago the Secret Service moved President Donald Trump to the White House bunker. That was related to making sure he was safe from protestors outside the White House.
That is very consistent with their mission. If you go to their website it reads: “Using advanced countermeasures, the Secret Service executes security operations that deter, minimize and decisively respond to identified threats and vulnerabilities.”
That is exactly what they did.
The bunker is an example of an advanced countermeasure. They were trying to minimize the threat. They did so decisively.
That is what was supposed to happen according to their mission.
Another part of their mission statement reads: “Other specialized resources also serve to provide protection from threats including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials.”
That means that they need to deter biological threats as well.
Clearly COVID-19 is a biological threat. As a physician, I would expect the protection to extend to preventing exposure to that. President Trump is in the at-risk age group.
However, that logic did not seem to apply to the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The worst place to put an at-risk person is in an enclosed space for an extended period of time.
The worst group to have assembled in that place are individuals who might be infected, but are not wearing masks.
So purely from a medical standpoint, it makes little sense to expose an at-risk individual to a situation like that. It is certainly riskier than the threat imposed by protestors outside the White House.
Both Drs. Fauci and Birks suggested that the rally be canceled. The Secret Service suggested that a curfew be put in place. They were doing their jobs correctly.
Neither of those things was politically attractive. So they didn’t happen.
I suspect that politics is a more important deciding factor than safety.
So apparently even if the Secret Service and White House physicians thought this was a bad idea, that did not stop it from happening.
If the President happens to get COVID at the rally, there will be no one to point a finger at except himself.
This certainly falls into the category of something that makes me go “Hmmm.”