Republican Wisconsin State Senator Andre Jacque is a one-man superspreader event, and I'm not talking about his girth.
Jacque testified last week, in a room where most people, including Jacque, were unmasked:
One of the Legislature's most active lawmakers who has opposed mask and vaccine mandates was hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19.
Sen. Andre Jacque, a Republican from De Pere, said Monday evening he and some family members tested positive late last week and that he was at the hospital with pneumonia. He did not say whether he had been admitted.
"I do not know when I contracted Covid, but some of my family and I did test positive for it at the end of last week after I came home from Madison," Jacque, 40, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a text message.
Jacque is being elusive about when he was confirmed to be COVID positive or whether he was even vaccinated. However, it seems rather dubious that he was, since he is an anti-vaxxer and proudly authored two anti-vaxxer bills. From his Facebook page:
I strongly believe citizens have a fundamental right to expect that their Constitutionally-protected freedoms will be respected by officials at all levels of government. SB 4 & 7, passed this afternoon by the full State Senate, were overwhelmingly supported by citizens at a public hearing last month as they would ensure the freedom to worship and to not be subject to forced vaccination. These two measures help ensure that government officials cannot use Covid-19 as an excuse to grab power at the expense of our liberties. A successful virus response requires time, communication, and trust, not heavy-handed big government mandates.
Now, if he was tested positive on Friday, that meant he had to already have the virus when he testified two days earlier, thus everyone in the room had been exposed to the virus.
But he made it much, much worse by not notifying only a few people that he had been in contact with. Most people that he exposed to the virus were NOT notified, including any of his Democratic colleagues. To say this ticked off a lot of people off would be a massive understatement:
But even though Jacque claimed to have notified a small handful of people about his positive COVID status, he didn’t act quickly enough and is still keeping crucial information from colleagues who were potentially exposed, a number of Jacque’s fellow legislators allege.
“I can tell you, I was pissed,” Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) told The Daily Beast. “There were murmurs of this since Friday, that Jacque had gotten a positive test, which means that he had to have had it three or four days before the symptoms showed up and he got a test. So we have been waiting for confirmation, but the committee chairman says he doesn’t think [Jacque] had it on Wednesday, so he doesn’t have to notify anybody—they have a colleague who was in the hospital, and they’re still shrugging it off.”
Wisconsin Republicans are “still following the pied piper in pretending that this is nothing, and that nobody should have to take any precautions,” continued Larson, who was at the meeting at which a possibly infectious Jacque appeared without a mask, “and anybody doing the responsible thing is somehow ‘showing weakness.’”
State Rep. Jodi Emerson was also scathing in a press release she issued after not hearing about it until she read in the paper four days later.
It is my firm belief that since there are laws that call for criminal charges and possible jail time for a person who willfully exposes other people to HIV and not notifying them, there should be the same laws and same possible punishments for those who willfully expose people with COVID without notifying them.
While holding a 7 hour hearing on an imaginary threat, Republicans exposed themselves and the public to the very real and deadly threat that they continue to let run rampant.
Spread truth, not the virus.
https://t.co/pUTXDbrBBv— Chris Larson (@ChrisJLarson) August 17, 2021
So predictable. Selfish, irresponsible, dangerous behavior like THIS is why I fear for my kids when they return to school. We need to require vaccination verification for in person work and school, and universal masking until everyone’s had a chance to be #vaccinated https://t.co/FecO2MiOW8
— Kelda Roys 😷💉 (@keldahelenroys) August 17, 2021
And Jodi Emerson's longer thread.
1/ 8 My thoughts are with Sen. Jacque & his family at this time. I wish him the best & hope he has a full and speedy recovery. I urge anyone who may have been infected or exposed by Sen. Jacque’s irresponsible behavior to schedule a COVID test and follow appropriate precautions
— Rep. Jodi Emerson (@JodiRep) August 17, 2021
