The hashtag #Coronapalooza was trending on Twitter Friday night and #TrumpsCoronavirusRally today.
The hashtag #Coronapalooza was trending on Twitter Friday night and #TrumpsCoronavirusRally today. No, these aren’t the official names of President Donald Trump’s campaign rally that’s scheduled to take place today at 7 pm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were more of a reaction to the rally, as you can see here:
And here:
Such hashtags reflect concerns that one of the uninvited attendees at the rally will be the Covid-19 coronavirus. And being able to interact with lots of people in an enclosed space will could be quite helpful for this virus’s campaign.
The booked venue for the rally is the BOK Center, which isn’t the place to get bok choy but an indoor arena with a capacity of around 19,000 people. The BOK Center was supposed to be the site of a July 8 Justin Bieber concert, which was postponed due to the pandemic. In fact, according to the BOK Center website, most of the upcoming events have been postponed, including the September 30 “Vampire Weekend.” While you won’t be hearing the Beibs sing “Yummy” on the BOK stage anytime soon, you will be hearing Trump today, not singing “Yummy,” but delivering a speech as part of his campaign to be re-elected as President of the U. S.
Public health officials are worried that such a mass indoor gathering may prove to be “yummy” for the virus. As Noah Weiland reported for the New York Times, Bruce Dart, Ph. D., Executive Director of the Tulsa Health Department, said of the campaign rally, “It’s the perfect storm of potential over-the-top disease transmission. It’s a perfect storm that we can’t afford to have.” A perfect phone call may be OK, assuming that it was really perfect. But a perfect storm? That doesn’t sound very good.
Dart wasn’t just throwing darts at the Trump campaign. What he said was in line with what scientific evidence would indicate. Just look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “Considerations for Events and Gatherings” website. The website divides mass gatherings and events into four risk levels:
Where does Trump’s Tulsa rally fall? Well, it ain’t on Zoom, Skype, or some other “virtual-only” platform so that rules out the “lowest risk” category.
