A Tale of a School Reopening

After the reopening fizzled out

The New York Times describes an exciting public health adventure in Israel.

"Confident it had beaten the coronavirus and desperate to reboot a devastated economy, the Israeli government invited the entire student body back in late May.

Within days, infections were reported at a Jerusalem high school, which quickly mushroomed into the largest outbreak in a single school in Israel, possibly the world.

The virus rippled out to the students’ homes and then to other schools and neighborhoods, ultimately infecting hundreds of students, teachers and relatives.

Other outbreaks forced hundreds of schools to close. Across the country, tens of thousands of students and teachers were quarantined.

Israel’s advice for other countries?

“They definitely should not do what we have done,” said Eli Waxman, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and chairman of the team advising Israel’s National Security Council on the pandemic. “It was a major failure.” 

The lesson, experts say, is that even communities that have gotten the spread of the virus under control need to take strict precautions when reopening schools. Smaller classes, mask wearing, keeping desks six feet apart and providing adequate ventilation, they say, are likely to be crucial until a vaccine is available.

“If there is a low number of cases, there is an illusion that the disease is over,” said Dr. Hagai Levine, a professor of epidemiology at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health. “But it’s a complete illusion.” "

Well, there you have it public health experiment fans. Another adventure in watching in horror at how the human mind slowly, painfully comes to grips with just how nasty the pandemic is. Of course, that is Israel. Here in the good 'ole U S of A, our national leadership is still in the C&I stage (clueless & incompetent) stage of mental processing. The leadership in Israel is in the more advanced C&S stage (concerned and scared).

The Human Mind and the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

Prior research has shown that people mispredict their own behavior and preferences across affective states. When people are in an affectively “cold” state, they fail to fully appreciate how “hot” states will affect their own preferences and behavior. When in hot states, they underestimate the influence of those states and, as a result, overestimate the stability of their current preferences. The same biases apply interpersonally; for example, people who are not affectively aroused underappreciate the impact of hot states on other people’s behavior. After reviewing research documenting such intrapersonal and interpersonal hot– cold empathy gaps, this article examines their consequences for medical, and specifically cancer-related, decision making, showing, for example, that hot– cold empathy gaps can lead healthy persons to expose themselves excessively to health risks and can cause health care providers to undertreat patients for pain. -- George Loewenstein, Carnegie Mellon University, Health Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 4(Suppl.), S49 –S56, 2005 [1]

The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

An NPR broadcast of Hidden Brain, discussed research on strong physiological (hunger, sexual arousal, pain) and emotional states (fear, anger, disgust) that can move people's minds from cold states to hot states. In hot states, physiology and/or emotions control, and at the same time memory of cold state knowledge and logic or reasoning are unavailable to shape behavior. In hot states, things just happen, and sometimes (usually?) they are bad or dumb things.

The comments below are mostly based on the broadcast from the start to about 20:40 and ~50:00 to 53:00. Maybe most people here will already understand all of this. Nonetheless, it should help to keep this important aspect of the human mind in easily accessed memory.


People in a cold state tend to misjudge what their behavior would be when they are in a hot state. Men's behavior when sexually aroused changes compared to when not aroused. When arousal passes people appear to have forgotten and downplay the intensity of the hot state. Studies show that after experiencing a hot state and returning to a cold state, people are generally worse at predicting what their behavior would be if they returned to the hot state.

The data indicates that the hot-cold empathy gap works two ways across time, prospective and retrospective. The prospective gap leads people to misjudge their future behavior if they re-experience a hot state they have experienced before, such as sexual arousal. The hypothesis here is that the memory that people have of their own hot state experience is softened or distorted, leading them to misjudge themselves in the past and their future hot state behavior.

The retrospective empathy gap is also hypothesized to involve the same memory tricks, which can happen literally within a minute or two of a hot state situation such as feeling pain. People who experienced pain and then had the pain source withdrawn, immediately misjudge and overestimate their ability to handle the same pain again. The same phenomena applies to hunger, addiction and depression. The cold state mind and what it knows is unable to access the hot state mind, making the hot state version of a person incomprehensible. The hot state mind cannot access the cold state logic. One woman, Irene, in a cold state said about this about her own hot state sexual arousal experiences: "I don't know that girl."

That was cold Irene talking about hot Irene.

This phenomenon also applies to other people. The empathy gap can literally blind us to how other people feel and why they do some of the things they do.

The Empathy Gap and Politics

Maybe this restates the obvious, but it still is worth saying. When politicians, special interests, ideologues and others use dark free speech (lies, deceit, emotional manipulation) (collectively 'bad people') to create false realities, leverage flawed reasoning and win support, they are generally trying to push listeners into a hot state. Fear is probably the most powerful emotion that bad people have in their dark free speech arsenal. Anger, bigotry, disgust, distrust and intolerance are other powerful emotions that bad people play on to try foment hot states and irrationality.

People in hot states are more susceptible to lies, deceit and flawed reasoning, including logic fallacies. That is why it is important to at least try to maintain emotional control when engaging in politics. And when control is lost, it is usually best to walk away until control is regained. The cooling off period can be very useful to help maintain rationality, even if it requires backing away overnight.


Footnote:
1. Lowenstein also writes:

"Affect has the capacity to transform us, as human beings, profoundly; in different affective states, it is almost as if we are different people. Affect influences virtually every aspect of human functioning: perception, attention, inference, learning, memory, goal choice, physiology, reflexes, self-concept, and so on. Indeed, it has been argued that the very function of affect is to orchestrate a comprehensive response to critical situations that were faced repeatedly in the evolutionary past (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000)."

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Thinking about thinking (without the BS)

By Dan Carsen

The first logic class I ever took was in a philosophy course in college. And that’s part of the problem.

I don’t mean the problem with me, though there are many. I mean the problem with our politics, our civics, and just the way we get along (or don’t) right now. One way we could help with all that, believe it or not, would be to teach logic the way we teach math: Start early, keep at it, and make it required. I’ve taught logic to fourth graders, proof you don’t need a Ph.D. to share the basics and get kids in the habit of evaluating claims and thinking about their own thinking.

One deceptively simple definition of logic is "the study of correct reasoning, especially regarding making inferences."

Logic is about understanding what follows from something else, what must be true, given a certain premise. It’s about the leap from A to B, or in logic parlance, from p to q, as in “if p, then q.” Logic is what takes us from a premise, via inference, to a conclusion. Let’s say all cats have tails. In that universe, if it’s a cat, then it must have a tail. Get it? Of course you do.

But speaking of cute (we hope), imagine a toddler who lives with a cat and recently learned the word “kitty.” One day, the toddler is cruising around in the back of mom’s car and spots a fuzzy, four-legged animal. The toddler joyously points at this poodle and yells “Kitty! Kitty!” Mom smiles and chooses not to shatter the happy moment with a distracted-driving lecture on logical fallacies.

I, however, have no such qualms (sorry kid): This toddler, perhaps forgivably, assumed all cute fuzzy four-legged animals are “kitty.” That’s a common flaw in logic, a logical fallacy, and not just among toddlers; it’s often called hasty generalization or overgeneralization. And this type of fallacy and others are everywhere. They’re used, believed, repeated, broadcast, printed, and repeated some more, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly. Once you’re familiar with them, you see them everywhere, especially in election season. I’ll bet a beer and a biscuit that after reading the prime offenders below, you’ll notice them regularly between now and November, and maybe for the rest of your life (again, sorry, but you’re better off). So here are just seven of many deadly logic sins, a most-wanted list of tried-and-true, mass-misleading fallacies, simplified and combined for easy reading:

Fancy Latin name: ad hominem ("to the person")

Simple description: Attacking the person, not the argument or position.

Example: In a debate, Candidate A makes a policy recommendation. Opposing Candidate B says, “What do you know? You’re just a [insert any term seen as denigrating]!” Candidate B has certainly disparaged Candidate A but in no way addressed the policy suggestion. Fallacious fail.

A similarly invalid and unfair cousin of ad hominem is guilt by association. A more positive but equally fallacious relative is appeal to authority. (Seen any attack ads or endorsements lately?)

Fancy Latin name: post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this therefore because of this")

Simpler science-y description: correlation is not causation.

So-simplified-it-actually-had-to-be-longer explanation: Just because event A precedes event B does not mean A caused B.

Example: In February of a U.S. president’s first term, the unemployment rate falls sharply. The president declares, “See! I’m a job-creating president!” In reality, it’s unlikely that the president — though his paddle is bigger than the average citizen’s — significantly changed the course of the supertanker that is the U.S. economy in one month. There are likely other reasons or causes for the improvement.

Yummier example: Crime rates rise as ice-cream consumption rises (that’s generally true, by the way). Fallacious reasoning: Clearly, ice cream is making people go insane with pleasure and commit crimes, plus ice-cream addicts are jacking people to get ice-cream money.

Actually, it’s just that ice-cream consumption and crime rates both tend to rise in summer. Along these lines, with the clear exception of my magic Boston Celtics socks, your lucky hat, lucky shoes, or — apologies to an AL.com Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist — lucky fish before Alabama games did not cause your team to win. Unless, of course, you literally (and accurately) threw it in the opposing team’s faces at a key moment during a game.

Fancy name: false dichotomy

Simple name: either-or thinking

Simple description: Simplistically presenting the complex, gray-area world as if there are only two choices.

Real example: After the 9-11 terror attacks, some political leaders said, in effect or exactly word-for-word, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” Uhm … actually, no. Someone can hate the terrorists and be against what you’re doing, too. Reality is not nearly as simple as your kindergarten-level portrayal. It almost never is. Advertising often relies on a false dichotomy, too: Use this product or you’re a chump. Again, no. I can avoid your product as if it’s a smelly guy with a bad cough and a machete and yet still not be a chump. Matter of fact, since you tried that fake, weak, fallacious Jedi mind-trick to try to capitalize on insecurity, using your product is what would actually make me a chump.

Simple name: straw man

Simple description: Distorting an opposing argument so you can more easily knock it down.

Example: Candidate A says, “Foreign aid often includes products that U.S. businesses make, then get paid for, and even so, it accounts for less than 1% of the national budget. I’m OK with keeping foreign aid expenditures where they are.”

Candidate B responds indignantly, knowing a loud show of emotion will be broadcast all over, "Why do you care more about foreigners than you do about U.S. citizens?!?"

That, of course, is not what Candidate A said, but it might soon be spread around the world.

By the way. this response also includes another type of logical fallacy, a non sequitur, Latin for “does not follow.” Fallacious panderers often get their money’s worth by using several fallacies simultaneously.

Simple name: overgeneralization

Simple description: Drawing a conclusion based on too little evidence.

Toddler example: See above how every cute fuzzy four-legged animal equals a kitty.

Adult but still cat-lover example: “My cat has a tail, and so does every other cat I’ve seen, so all cats have tails.” (Understandable, but wrong. See Manx cats, mutations, rocking chairs.)

One dangerous brand of overgeneralization is stereotyping, or unfairly attributing a quality to an entire group of people, like “all Asians are _____,” or “women are _____.” Stereotypes are sometimes positive, often negative, but always wrong with specific, actual people. They’re also straightforward examples of how simplistic, sloppy thinking can hurt people.

Simple name or description: slippery slope

Simple description: You assume, without evidence, that one event will lead to other, often undesirable, events.

Real example: A well-known pundit in 2009 repeatedly said that allowing same-sex marriage could lead to humans marrying animals, including goats, ducks, dolphins and turtles. If it came down to it, I guess I’d choose a dolphin (I value intelligence and love to swim), but to my knowledge, there have been no hot-zones of inter-species matrimony since gay marriage became legal. Likewise, no matter your views on the subject, we can all agree that few if any human-turtle hybrids are walking around, which helps show the fallaciousness of that particular slippery-slope argument.

Simple names: false equivalence or false analogy.

Simple description: You assume things that are alike in one way are alike in other ways.

This fallacy is painfully common in politics and media perception. It’s even a crutch or a byproduct of overworked, lazy or otherwise compromised news producers: “I don’t care that 99.9% of the field is saying X! Get that bombastic suspiciously funded contrarian who’s saying Y in the studio and give him equal time — that’ll make for interesting (and misleading) TV!” Or, “You’re saying my political party is corrupt. So is yours!” Or, “You’re saying my news source is slanted. So is yours!” This reflexive both-side-ism appeals to our American egalitarianism. But facts aren’t egalitarian. As the heartless killer Marlo in “The Wire” explained, they’re one way, not another way. It’s highly unlikely that Political Party A and Political Party B commit identical transgressions and to an identical degree. It’s also highly unlikely that News Outlets C and D are biased, inaccurate, misleading or damaging in the same way, to the same degree, and to the same number of people.

These are some of the most common errors in logic that can mislead us even from true premises to false conclusions. But even airtight logic can bring us to false conclusions if a premise is false. Logic matters, and the facts it depends on matter, too.

Learning about logic, which is what joins facts into the web of how we understand the world, is one type of a valuable but rare endeavor: thinking about our own thinking. I know some of you would love to get that clueless uncle or gullible Facebook friend thinking, period, but thinking about our own thinking does improve thinking in general. It makes it less automatic, less reflexive, less taken for granted, and less impervious to the insane idea that we might be wrong. That’s crucial because, in addition to swimming in logical fallacies and purposeful misinformation, we’re all lugging around an unfortunate filter psychologists call “confirmation bias.” It’s one of the most important truths anyone can grasp: We all tend to accept evidence that supports what we already believe but dismiss what would undercut our beliefs. Given that backdrop, skilled media manipulators, and bias-boosting social-media algorithms, bad logic that seems like common sense is all the more seductive and misleading.

Carsen is a reporter and editor turned teacher who lives in Birmingham.

https://www.al.com/news/2020/08/thinking-about-thinking-without-the-bs.html

My Moral Duty: Step into the Belly of the Enraged Beast

The president presents an urgent and deadly threat to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, civil society and honest governance.[1] I've felt that way for over two years, but since his election, a lot of other people have come to about the same conclusion. Some people saw the danger immediately. Masha Gessen, a Russian who witnessed Putin crush democracy and the rule of law in Russia, wrote this a couple of days after the 2016 election in an article, Autocracy: Rules for Survival:

“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”

That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said [in her concession speech] on Wednesday.

  Given that, I started spending some time every couple of days at big, hard core radical right political sites. The goal is not trolling. The goal is engagement based on facts and sound reasoning as best I can articulate it. I've been at it for just a few days. What it is like at the three sites I'm visiting is pretty ugly. Most of the articles and reader comments are based on lies, misinformation, irrational emotional manipulation and flawed reasoning due to partisan bias (motivated reasoning and logic fallacies). Those sites present a vast cornucopia of unrestrained dark free speech.

Crippling inconvenient voices 

I wanted to start with The Federalist, Breitbart, Town Hall and Daily Caller. Since I last visited, The Federalist has shut down its comments section, so that one is out. Town Hall blocks comments with links in them, which greatly undermines my ability to engage with evidence. This morning, Daily Caller blocked one of my comments with links in it by holding it in moderation. I do  not expect the comment to be OKed. Daily Caller does not allow images to be uploaded, so those are out there.

In response, I will change tactics and provide a phrase of about 5-7 words that people can search to find the material I wanted to link to.

So far, my general impression is that these big radical conservative sites are trying to limit dissident voices as much as possible. That helps to protect the tribe from cognitive dissonance, inconvenient facts and so forth. In turn, that further radicalizes people who stay in echo chambers like that.

I am beginning to believe that Disqus itself could be involved in limiting dissenting voices by allowing downvotes to damage a commenter's reputation. I am also checking to see if my new Germaine II account gets hacked and my upvotes drained away. If that happens, that I will no longer be able to freely comment without an administrator owner acting to allow make me a trusted user. In my experience, that has not happened with my old Germaine account at any conservative site.

The experience so far

The experience is what I expected. Most of it is irrational and disrespectful. So far, one person has been respectful, rational and evidence-based. We parted on good terms. Here is one approximate (not exact) example of the kind of engagement I am experiencing:

Initial comment: Fauci has been incorrect on everything.

Germaine II: No, he has been mostly (~95% ?) correct. And, since COVID-19 is new, there was significant uncertainty in the early months. There still is uncertainty about important aspects of how the virus spreads and its pathology. Fauci's statements have been couched in terms of probabilities, not certainties. That is being honest and professional. (the comments are here: http://disq.us/p/2ax83tg )

Lots of lies and fake conspiracy theories have been spread about him, but that's just radical right politics these days.
Attacker 1 (Gunny something): Hey Liberal (and that's a filthy word where I come from), Quack Fauxi ain't never been RIGHT but then again, you're a Leftist so facts are to YOU as a crucifix is to Drac.

You should write-in The Hildabeast for POTUS! hahahahaahahahahahahahahah

Germaine II: Hey Gunny. I'm not a liberal (or a conservative or centrist). I'm a pragmatic rationalist.

Fauci is as right as he can be in view of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, which is caused by a new virus. You are grossly misinformed about Fauci.

Attacker 2: YOUR A PIMPLE ON SOCIETY,S REAR, CHIT4BRAINS !!

Germaine II: When I see ad hominem attacks, I know the insulter is shooting blanks.

Attacker 3: Go gaslight your pals over at Media Matters... or whatever leftard craphole you came from...

Attacker 2: WHAT TRUTH, YOURS IS JUST ANOTHER OPINION FROM THE DARK SDE, CHIT4BRAINS !!


Anyway, you can see what it is like trying to deal respectfully with many of the radical right folks at dark echo chambers. But in view of the danger that Trump represents, I should try to do something, even if it is just a little and even if it doesn't work. Maybe I'll be able to sow a few seeds of doubt in a couple of minds.

My expectation

I expect the sites I'm visiting to ban or shadow ban me. It probably won't be long. This is deeply concerning because it would show an increasing unwillingness to even allow dissenting but respectful voices to be heard at all. That is socially damaging and frightening.


Question: Am I wasting my time, or should a person try to do what they can as best they can?


Footnote:
1. Even if Trump is re-elected, he may not be able to establish some sort of a plutocratic dictatorship based on demagoguery. Nonetheless, it is possible he can get close or even succeed. Since there is time to try to oppose the president, it seems reasonable to at least try.

The Awesome Power of Plausible Deniability

Context

One of the president's few core competencies is knowing how to operate under cover of plausible deniability. Plausible deniability (PD) can cover both legal and illegal activities. It is usually employed to cover embarrassing legal activities and illegal activities. However, PD can also be used to protect trade secrets and other forms of intellectual property, which is legal. Talent at creating strong PD shields is common and widespread among high level businessmen, crooks, tyrants and politicians. It is a way of life.

PD works very well most of the time because it is devilishly hard to dislodge. PD veils truth. Good practitioners of PD know not to leave any more of a tangible evidence trail than is absolutely necessary. The good practitioners do not take and keep written notes. The do not leave voice mail messages or ever send sensitive letters or emails. The good ones do all of their PD work in person whenever possible. They almost always shield tangible evidence they cannot avoid leaving behind using secrecy agreements.

In the case of the president, he speakes in code when it is time for dirty work that needs to be done. Even if someone had recorded him telling his employees to do something embarrassing or illegal, the president could deny that literal words were intended to get anyone to do any of it. For example, a Miami Herald article, Trump never told Cohen to lie — but suggested it by talking in code, Cohen says, focused on testimony by Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, now a convicted felon. The MH wrote:

"Michael Cohen said in testimony to Congress on Wednesday that President Donald Trump never directly ordered him to lie, but instead made his wishes clear by speaking in “code” understood by anyone who works with him. 

“He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders, he speaks in a code. And I understand the code, because I’ve been around him for a decade,” testified Cohen, Trump’s former longtime personal attorney. 

For example, Cohen said Trump would frequently remark that he had no business ties in Russia. Cohen said he understood Trump to mean that he should deny any such connections."

One other thing that PD requires when people are asking uncomfortable questions is lying. If the holder of the PD shield is asked questions and has to answer, the only way to leave the shield intact usually requires the shield holder to lie. The typical lie comes out as something like "I don't recall", "I'll look that up and get back to you", "I am not familiar with that", "We would never do such a thing", "I don't understand the details of that", "I don't know what you mean", and so forth. Most of the time, that is mostly or completely lies.

Plausible deniability professionals in action

An article published today in the New York Times, Grilled by Lawmakers, Big Tech Turns Up the Gaslight, describes in detail how the chief executives of Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google wield their PD shields to try to keep congress from pursuing antitrust legislation. This is well worth being aware of. The NYT writes:

"When Mark Zuckerberg appeared in front of Congress two years ago, the Facebook chief executive’s memorable retort to a clueless questioner was “Senator, we run ads.” After Wednesday’s marathon appearance by Mr. Zuckerberg and three other tech titans at a House hearing on competition in the tech industry, a more fitting quote might be “Congresswoman, I’m not sure what you would mean by ‘threaten.’”

That was Mr. Zuckerberg’s evasive answer to a question asked by Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, about whether Facebook had ever threatened to squash smaller competitors by copying their products if they wouldn’t let Facebook acquire them.

It was a good question with a clear-cut answer. Facebook’s copy-and-crush approach has been well documented for years, and Ms. Jayapal brought even more receipts — previously undisclosed messages in which Mr. Zuckerberg issued thinly veiled threats to Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, about what would happen to his company if he refused to sell. 

An honest Mr. Zuckerberg might have replied, “Yes, Congresswoman, like most successful tech companies, we acquire potential competitors all the time, and copy the ones we can’t buy. That’s how we’ve avoided going extinct like MySpace or Friendster, and we’re about to do it again with Instagram Reels, our new TikTok clone.” That would have been an illuminating answer, and one that could have let lawmakers in on the kill-or-be-killed ethos of Silicon Valley. Instead, he dodged and weaved, trying to explain away the emails without admitting the obvious.

He did the same thing when Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, pressed him for answers about Facebook Research — an app that was used to snoop on users’ smartphone usage and give Facebook detailed data about its competitors. Mr. Zuckerberg initially said he wasn’t familiar with the app, even though Apple’s decision to bar it from its App Store nearly caused a meltdown at his company last year. (He later said he misspoke, and that he remembered it.)

The result was a hearing that, at times, felt less like a reckoning than an attempted gaslighting — a group of savvy executives trying to convince lawmakers that the evidence that their yearslong antitrust investigation had dug up wasn’t really evidence of anything.

At one point, Mr. Bezos was asked about a recent Wall Street Journal report that Amazon had set up a venture capital fund to invest in start-ups, only to then introduce its own versions of those start-ups’ products.

“I don’t know the specifics of that situation,” Mr. Bezos replied."

To prepare for the hearing, lawmakers obtained solid evidence of activities that may violate antitrust law. Because of that, the PD shields the CEOs raised were not very convincing. The NYT argues that the CEOs are not "sloppy or forgetful." The CEOs PD performance was not credible. The hearings indicate that the beginning of accountability for the abuses that tech giants have been getting  away with for years. The PD shield seems to be crumbling.

The morality of PD in situations like this is obvious, i.e., it is immoral when used to hide crimes. It hides and protects far too many white collar crimes and criminals.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, who often went without a mask, tests positive for the coronavirus

WASHINGTON — Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who has refused to wear a mask, tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday shortly before he was expected to travel with President Donald Trump to Texas.
Gohmert, 66, said he tested positive during the routine screening at the White House prior to boarding Air Force One and blamed his infection on the fact that he had begun to wear a mask more frequently in recent days.

News that the Texas Republican contracted the coronavirus sent lawmakers scrambling to account for Gohmert's whereabouts in the Capitol in the days leading up to his positive test. It also reignited conversations about whether lawmakers, many of whom travel to Washington from all around the country and tend to be in vulnerable age groups, were taking appropriate precautions to prevent an outbreak on Capitol Hill.

Gohmert attended Attorney General William Barr’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, sitting for hours in a hearing room with dozens of other lawmakers. Gohmert, along with other Republicans, was seen at times during the day without a mask.

In an interview with a local Texas news station Wednesday morning after learning he was infected, Gohmert said it was "ironic" that he tested positive "because a lot of people have made a big deal out of my not wearing a mask a whole lot, but in the last week or two I have worn a mask more than I have in the whole last four months.”

“I can't help but wonder if by keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, if I might have put some germs, some of the virus on the mask and breathed it in," he said.

Gohmert appeared to be dialing into the interview from his Capitol Hill office, where many lawmakers and staffers were working Wednesday. It is unclear why he went back to the Hill, where social distancing can be difficult, after testing positive.

In a statement he posted to Twitter, Gohmert said he would be "very, very careful" to make sure he did not give the coronavirus to anyone and referred to it as “the Wuhan virus,” a phrase that has been associated with a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Gohmert was seen standing in proximity to Barr in the Capitol hallway Tuesday while neither he nor Barr wore a mask. His chief of staff, Connie Hair, tweeted Wednesday that "he wore a mask at the hearing, unless he was speaking," and suggested, as Gohmert did, that fiddling with the mask could have been what led to infection.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec confirmed reports that Barr took a coronavirus test Wednesday after it was revealed Gohmert had tested positive. Kupec did not immediately respond when asked whether Barr had received the test results.

Rep. Granger Kay Granger, also a Texas Republican, said she was seated next to Gohmert on a flight from Texas on Sunday evening and would self-quarantine at the direction of the Congress's attending physician. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said he would also self-quarantine after attending a hearing of the Natural Resources Committee with Gohmert on Tuesday.

It is unclear when an infected person becomes contagious. The World Health Organization has said that people who have not developed symptoms can pass the virus to others, but more research is needed to understand how frequently that occurs.

Gohmert told CNN in June that he was not wearing a mask because he was tested regularly for the coronavirus, but that he would wear one if he tested positive.

"I don't have the coronavirus, turns out as of yesterday I've never had it," he said. "But if I get it, you'll never see me without a mask."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people wear a mask when in public, regardless of whether they have tested positive or negative for the coronavirus. The CDC says that masks are critical to slowing the spread of the coronavirus, especially in cases where an infected person does not have symptoms and is unaware that they could make others sick.

“If you test positive or negative for COVID-19 on a viral or an antibody test, you still should take preventive measures to protect yourself and others,” the CDC website says.

Gohmert was potentially exposed to the coronavirus after he attended the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February. Gohmert tweeted at the time that a CDC physician had cleared him to return to work in Washington after assessing his situation.

Multiple lawmakers have tested positive for the coronavirus since the outbreak hit the U.S. earlier this year, and many others have self-quarantined after potential exposure. Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., Neal Dunn, R-Fla., Morgan Griffith, R-Va., Mike Kelly, R-Pa., Ben McAdams, D-Utah, Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., and Tom Rice, R-S.C., have tested positive for the virus. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has also tested positive.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has said that he and his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, and Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., also said he had tested positive for the antibodies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in response to the news on Gohmert that she was “so sorry” for the lawmaker. “But I’m also sorry for my members, who are concerned because he has been showing up at meetings without a mask and making a thing of it,” she said.

When asked about Gohmert, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he was “concerned about the irresponsible behavior of many of the Republicans who have chosen to consistently flout well-established public health guidance perhaps out of fealty to their boss, Donald Trump, who is the head of the anti-mask movement in America.”

Congress declined the White House's offer to provide lawmakers with rapid coronavirus testing capabilities earlier this year.



https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/newspolitics/rep-louie-gohmert-who-often-went-without-a-mask-tests-positive-for-the-coronavirus/ar-BB17kEy2?li=AAggNb9&ocid=mailsignout