The Biden campaign halted Senator Kamala Harris’s in-person campaigning through Sunday after two people who had traveled with her tested positive for the coronavirus, the campaign announced Thursday morning.
The communications director for Ms. Harris’s vice-presidential bid, Liz Allen, and a flight crew member tested positive, the campaign said. Ms. Harris herself tested negative on Wednesday.
“Senator Harris was not in close contact, as defined by the C.D.C., with either of these individuals during the two days prior to their positive tests; as such, there is no requirement for quarantine,” the Biden campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, said in a statement.
“Regardless, out of an abundance of caution and in line with our campaign’s commitment to the highest levels of precaution, we are canceling Senator Harris’s travel through Sunday.”
Work required me to take a trip out of state recently, so I had the fun of air travel, to a state with far higher case counts, hotel stay, having to occasionally eat in a restaurant or stop at random shops, etc. On the good side, mask usage where I was at was much more consistent than it is in my own stomping grounds, but the number of people I saw at the airport freely removing their masks in gate waiting areas (where people are the most concentrated, and right next to streams of people puffing as they walk between gates… wtf?) or wearing their masks under their noses (??) was not very encouraging.
So, I’m now in a self-imposed quarantine inside my own home to try to make sure I haven’t brought anything back to pass on. Slowly going stir-crazy in one small room, making sure to wear a mask and try to be as sanitary as possible if I’m forced to leave the room. While still working, of course. And wondering if I’m being far too paranoid.
I really, really hope one of the vaccines in development holds out, because this kind of thing really isn’t sustainable. And there’s already plans for more travel…
Assuming you mean for work… unfortunately, while a lot can be (and has to be) done remotely, there’s times when there is just no substitute for having someone who knows the job and has eyes and hands on equipment. I can’t complain too much, since as “essential” jobs go it could be far, far worse. Isolating like this in order to try to be responsible, though, is definitely not as easy as it seemed when thinking about it in the relative freedom I had before…