‘BARRON IS JUST FINE’

Trump Uses Barron’s COVID-19 Diagnosis to Argue for School Reopenings

The president seems unable to understand that the first family’s COVID-19 experience may be slightly different to everyone else’s.

If you, your spouse, teenage son, and scores of colleagues all caught COVID-19 at the same time, it might give you pause for thought about whether crowding people together during a global pandemic is a good idea. But, for President Donald Trump, it’s proof of the opposite. At his rally in Iowa on Wednesday, the president said his son Barron’s bout of the virus is an argument for reopening America’s schools. “Barron’s tested positive,” he said. “Within, like, two seconds it was Barron is just fine now. He’s tested negative, right? Because it happens. People have it and it goes. Get the kids back to school, we’ve got to get the kids back to school.” In a report last month, the CDC said more than 277,000 children ages 5 to 17 were confirmed infected between March and Sept. 19, with a spike coinciding with school reopenings. The CDC reported 51 deaths in school-age kids.