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They came to fight a Republican-backed ballot bill. Now, the renegade Texas Democrat group is fighting COVID-19.
And the White House is fighting against the idea that their lobbying efforts could have created a coronavirus super-spread event.
The group of state lawmakers traveled to Washington, DC, last week to lobby the Senate for a Democrat-sponsored ballot bill that would overturn the kind of legislation their Republican counterparts in the State of origin are currently trying to get adopted. Many of them shared the same charter jet – from which they posted a selfie without a mask.
TEXAS DEMOCRATS IN DC: PHOTOS OF THEIR TRIP
Their absence from Austin also left the state legislature without a quorum, meaning the GOP majority cannot vote on its own bill, even if it would likely pass.
But a coronavirus outbreak has spread to at least six of the lawmakers this week, two people who have interacted with them and created a secondary risk for other people.
The combined punch has thwarted the group’s hopes of meeting with members of Congress they hope to convince to support the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
An anonymous White House official and a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s communications staff each contracted the virus during a reception for Democratic lawmakers last week, according to an Axios report.
Fox News also spoke to several of the Texas lawmakers on Wednesday who stepped down in a meeting they said involved the entire traveling caucus.
PSAKI DOES NOT CALL THE TRIP FROM TEXAS DEMS TO DC A “SUPER-SPREADER” LIKE MORE OFFICIALS TEST POSITIVE
“We have all been fully vaccinated since March,” State Representative Gene Wu wrote in a long Twitter thread on Monday. “We became complacent because we felt safe. We had no positive results for months and we were negligent.”
It is believed that everyone involved has been vaccinated, which means that those who test positive are part of a small proportion of those vaccinated who do.
Asked Tuesday by Fox News’s Peter Doocy on whether the ill-fated meeting was a “super-propagator” event, White House press secretary Jen Psaki withdrew from the term.
PELOSI VACCINATED AND WHITE HOUSEHOLD STAFF TEST POSITIVE FOR COVID-19
More than 10% of itinerant Democrats have now tested positive for the virus, Doocy noted – at least six out of 55.
“It’s not a characterization we’re doing here,” Psaki said, referring to the term “super-spreader”. “Vaccines are not foolproof. We know about vaccines – I think these people have been vaccinated. That’s a good sign.”
But Dr Marc Siegel said the term “super-spreader” is just right to use to describe the encounter – although there is a silver lining.
WHERE TO FIND COVID VACCINES
“A lot of people haven’t gotten sick because they’ve been vaccinated,” he said. “This is a super-spreader event with less spread from the vaccine – it’s the glass half full.”
If no one had been vaccinated, he added, everyone at the reception would have been in danger. And none of the vaccinated victims exhibited serious symptoms. But despite the vaccinations and the “puns”, the disease still spread.
“They are creating divisions by refusing to recognize a medical reality,” said Dr. Siegel of the White House’s refusal to use the term.
According to a Cleveland clinic, a super-spreader event occurs when “there is a greater amount of transmission than one might expect” at a large event.
Fortunately, vaccinated people who contract the virus are much less likely to spread it or develop serious reactions and end up hospitalized, and Wu said no one who has been infected has suffered anything other than mild symptoms.
Vaccinated people who still manage to get “breakthrough” coronavirus infections see a lower level of virus in their system – the nostrils in particular, Dr Siegel said. Although the amount varies among individuals, it significantly reduces the risk of transmission.
Although the numbers are changing as more data is recorded, he said experts expect to see around 14 per 100 cases of the new variant of the Delta coronavirus in fully vaccinated people who have received the two-shot vaccines. from Pfizer or Moderna.
“I want people to understand that this doesn’t cast a shadow over the vaccine,” he said. “The numbers are consistent. The only variability here is the amount of virus you have in your nose – the more viruses there are, the more you could be a super-spreader.”
The unmasked meeting itself, however, he said, was an example of “recklessness and mixed messages.”
After the reception with the Democrats in Texas, where one of his employees allegedly got the virus, Pelosi was again pictured on Capitol Hill wearing a mask.
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Texas Democrats had hoped to meet and pressure several senators, especially moderates Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona.
“I think the more we educate the more we can bring their attention to the things that are already happening in Texas, I think they will understand where we are at,” said Texas State Representative Jarvis Johnson, last week. “And we have certainly met all the other senators to lay out our plans, our goals, what we hope to achieve.”
Paul Conner of Fox News contributed to this report.
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