Today in not part of the job description:

They also may be called upon to take a fake
hundred for the President at any moment.

Ok, COVID-19's not a bullet. Well, ok, obviously, but what I mean is that ever since Lincoln's trip to the theatre, Secret Service agents take an oath to protect the President even at the cost of their own lives. So like, they may be called upon to leap in front of the President and take a bullet for them regardless of who it is. Also they're in charge of investigating counterfeit money. Which, weird combo, I know, but the agency was created at the same time as the Lincoln assassination, so they just tacked body guard onto their job description. 

Anyway, I bring this up because getting locked in the presidential limo with a guy with a raging case of coronavirus isn't part of the job. Especially when it's for-wait for it-a goddamn photo op. Yup, we're doing this agin.

Pictured: that time Trump had people teargassed and
beaten so he could wave a Bible in front of a church.
Not pictured: any sign that he appreciated the irony.

What we should have done with him
on day one. Huh? No, of his presidency.

Yeah, in an effort to reassure everybody that he's totally fine, the President, who has been admitted to Walter Reed Military Hospital, grabbed his security detail and piled into his limo to take a trip around the block. Holy shit. I'm not a medical expert, but mask or no, he just exposed a limo's worth of Secret Service agents to a deadly disease so that he can can wave at supporters. Um...this is going to kill people right? At the very least, they're probably looking at quarantine and possibly serious illness.

But hey, like I said, I'm no medical expert. I wonder what a medical expert would say? Oh look, here's a tweet from Dr. James P. Phillips, attending physician at Walter Reed:

Whoa...maybe I am a medical expert.

Check, check and double check.

Dr. Phillips gave the New York Times a phone interview later that day in which he raised the question of medical ethics, wondering if his doctors were ordered to disregard medical sense and let this happen. Because it beggars logic to suggest that physicians, if they were being listened to, would ever let healthy people get in a car with someone with COVID-19. Because it's insane and no one in their right minds would think it's ok to recklessly endanger others. Because it's the act of a megalomaniac who cares more about their image than people's lives.

In this example, politics are the space
parasite, which I think most would agree with.

Like, there's a reason the doctor on Star Trek is the only person on the Enterprise who can give an order to the captain. It's because you can't have the person in charge, a person upon whom lives may depend, making compromised decisions. Maybe there's a neuro-parasite or a Ferengi with a mind-control device or something. You just can't be sure. So when the president is making politically motivated decisions that puts other people's lives at risk, the doctors need to be able to step in and stop him. 

What I'm saying is that we might not be able to tell 
the incoherent messaging and lack of leadership
that comes with the President being incapacitated
from the administration's usual goat-rodeo.

The White House said the doctors ok'd this, but of course they didn't. Or at least, they were ordered to ok it which isn't the same thing and undermines everyone's safety. So like, what else are we being lied to about? He apparently lied to Sean Hannity on Thursday, telling him that he was awaiting results when in fact he had had a positive test. He was put on oxygen on Friday, but his doctor refused to confirm this until Sunday. So was he able to fulfill the obligations of his office? I mean, sure, has he ever, but it's something we should know about, right?

The golf industry alone must be reeling.

The global economy rises and falls on whether or not the U.S. president is, you know, in charge of his faculties, so politics aside, lying to us about it is a serious problem and one that in any other reality would have serious consequences for the Republicans. I mean, you know the GOP would be loosing their shit right now if this was a Democratic president hiding their condition and ordering doctors to tow a party line.  

Look, whatever I may think of him, no one deserves a slow death by asphyxiation. I continue to wish him and everyone else a safe recovery. But for real, at this point we just need him to get better so he'll stop spreading this disease everywhere he goes like some kind of reckless lawn sprinkler full of respiratory disease.

Pictured: an apt metaphor.