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Herman Cain Hospitalized With COVID-19 After Attending Trump's Tulsa Rally

The former GOP presidential candidate entered the hospital Wednesday, and is not on a ventilator.

By Aliza Worthington
07/02/20 12:19 pm

In the ever-expanding category of "It Couldn't Have Happened To A Nicer Guy," we have former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain entering the hospital for COVID-19 treatment. Mr. Cain is not on a ventilator.

He was spotted, though, at that Tulsa COVID-Palooza Rally his buddy Trump held fewer than two weeks ago. Cain's not speculating about how he may have caught the virus, but lots of folks are placing bets on that little deep dive into the MAGA-spittle-laden air. The timing sure is right, and the Stage 4 cancer survivor was not wearing a mask, so this places him squarely in the running for the Darwin Awards finalists, as well.

According to The Daily Beast:

News of his diagnosis comes just days after Cain appeared at President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was attended by scores of maskless supporters. In a statement, Cain’s team said he was informed that he had tested positive on June 29, and “had developed symptoms serious enough” that he required hospitalized [sic] in the Atlanta area on July 1. “Mr. Cain did not require a respirator, and he is awake and alert,” the statement says, adding, “There is no way of knowing for sure how or where Mr. Cain contracted then [sic] coronavirus.”

Let the congregation say, "UGH."

CNN's Brooke Baldwin spoke to Dr. Leana Wen about the likelihood of Cain having contracted the virus at the Tulsa rally, and the difficulty of contact tracing after the fact.

WEN: That kind of indoor gathering with thousands of people, that is a public health nightmare because you imagine that for everyone whom had symptoms or was exposed to somebody who had symptoms, they're then going back to their home towns. They'll be around family members, they'll be going about their daily work, and maybe they'll be traveling to get back, and that's hundreds, if not thousands of people for whom contract tracing would have to be performed. We already know that the public health infrastructure is stretched so thin. I just really cannot imagine how there would be nearly enough public health contact tracers to be able to trace every one of those infections. That's the beginning of super spreader events, where an infection can become a cluster, a cluster could become an outbreak and then an epidemic.
[...]
But I think it's not just about him {Cain}, there are other reports of dozens, if not hundreds of people testing positive after the rally, so, again, I just worry about where those individuals went, and who they were exposed to afterwards.

Of course, Baldwin reiterates that they don't know how or when he got it, but as I mentioned above, if the ventilator fits...

Here they all are in a bus heading to the rally. Cain is toward the back of the shot.

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