Planning on getting some food from the Mar-a-Lago à la carte Dining Service this weekend? Well, looks like you’ll need to change your plans because Donald Trump’s resort in Florida is having a, drum roll please, Covid-19 outbreak.
As they say when you put your nose in an electric socket, shocking, right? If you were hoping to get your share of “Continental, New World, Classical and New Caribbean cuisine,” then maybe, just maybe you’ll have to settle for something else like say McDonalds for instance. That’s because the Mar-a-Lago resort today sent out an email alert to its members that CNN’s Jake Tapper was so kind to tweet out to the rest of the world:
As you can see from the message, “some” of the Mar-a-Lago staff have tested positive for the Covid-19 coronavirus. Of course, the word “some” is rather vague. When your significant other says, “I’ve have had some other lovers,” there may be a difference between three and 427. Similarly, when your friend tells you, “I just left some marmots in your bed,” the exact number can make a difference. In the same way, it may be helpful for guests and public health officials to know how many people actually tested positive for Covid-19 in such a setting.
The email continued by saying that the resort is “temporarily suspending service at the Beach Club and à la carte Dining Service,” since no one would want the Covid-19 coronavirus to be on the menu. In other words, you wouldn’t want to put the coronavirus before the à la carte. Then there was the phrase, “we are taking this measure out of an abundance of caution,” commonly seen whenever a service is suspended or a product is recalled due to an infectious disease outbreak. After all, rarely do you see official statements from businesses like, “we are taking this measure out of an abundance of the virus,” or “we are taking this measure out of an abundance of bleep,” regardless of what’s really happening.
Who invited the Covid-19 coronavirus to Mar-a-Lago? Let’s see, just last weekend, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hosted a fundraiser at the Mar-a-Lago resort. That shindig included a “surprise” guest. No, it wasn’t a gigantic coronavirus. Instead, it was the man pictured in the following tweet from Huckabee Sanders :
Yep, that’s former U.S. President and current Mar-a-Lago resident Trump. So, with people gathered indoors during the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic, the question is how many face masks were invited to this event. Hmm, photos from the event suggest not enough. Take a look at the smiling maskless faces rather close together in the photo above and below:
Oh, and that wasn’t the only event over the past week where people were doing the “I can’t mask my face when I’m with you” thing. Here’s a photo from Mar-a-Lago dated March 17:
Gatherings where people are standing close to each other without wearing face masks in the middle of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic when more contagious variants are spreading? Gee, what possibly could go wrong?
This certainly hasn’t been the first time a Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has occurred in the vicinity of Trump. The 2020 occupants and visitors of the White House have been the source of multiple Covid-19 coronavirus outbreaks. Trump campaign rallies from June through September reportedly led to surges in Covid-19 cases, and a Trump campaign fundraiser on September 25 last year may have resulted in Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel getting infected. The Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett nomination event at the White House on September 26 was considered a Covid-19 coronavirus superspreader event, as I have covered previously for Forbes. A November 3, 2020, Election Day party seemed to have left a trail of newly infected people. And, of course, Trump himself ended up being hospitalized with Covid-19 in early October 2020, which was a lot of Scaramuccis ago.
Therefore, some on social media didn’t exactly display a look of shock when they heard news of this new Covid-19 outbreak in Mar-a-Lago. For example, @ZPFleming tweeted out the following question:
The events of the past week also weren’t the first time guests at Mar-a-Lago have appeared maskless and social “closening” during the pandemic. For example, remember that New Year’s Eve party at the resort that included headliners Vanilla Ice and the Beach Boys? Or perhaps Beach Boy, as in Mike Love, lead singer for the Beach Boys? As I covered for Forbes, the party seemed to have plenty of people mixing and mingling without face coverings. Flouting public health precautions in such a manner can help the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) really “get around” in the words of that Beach Boys song. And that wouldn’t exactly be nice, nice, baby.