President Donald Trump is likely "ignoring" his public health advisers' warnings about moving forward with his MAGA rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this weekend, where several factors will combine to create a public coronavirus health hazard, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, the White House adviser for health policy under former President Barack Obama, said Tuesday.
"People will be not only congregating, they'll be then going back to their community and taking the virus to various communities," Emanuel said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I am sure his public health advisers are telling him not to do it and he's ignoring them."
He explained that there are four things that enhance the transmission of coronavirus: large crowds, enclosed spaces, being in a place for a prolonged period of time, and "shouting, yelling, singing, coughing, sneezing."
"Let me say, you have all four going [on] in Tulsa," said Emanuel. "That's not a good combination to reduce the spread, especially if you don't require people to physically distance, which you can't in an arena. You're [also] going to have congestion at the entrance, congestion at the bathrooms, and concession stands."
Meanwhile, events like the rally and the protest marches are "perfectly script written for super-spreading events," said Emanuel. "In the protests, it was compounded by the use of tear gas in the streets that the police did. That was a bad tactic for a situation where we have a deadly virus."
Emanuel said he's also concerned about the dramatic increase of coronavirus in states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and several other states.
"We're right back in March," he said. "We're right back at the start when we were getting into the exponential growth phase. The problem now is we're in the exponential growth phase and places are opening up rather than having physical distancing, wearing masks and other public health measures coming into force and that's a worrisome combination."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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