Bruce Dart, director of the Tulsa health department, spoke during a press conference on Wednesday, June 17. Christopher Creese / Bloomberg via Getty Images
When coronavirus spread through the United States, health experts worried that President Trump’s campaign campaign in Tulsa, Oklahoma, would become a new hotspot for coronavirus infections.
Public health leaders and experts have expressed their concerns, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, and Bruce Dart, director of the Tulsa health department, who told the Tulsa World that he hoped “we can postpone this to a time when the virus is not as big as it is today.”
The Arena Bank of Oklahoma Center Tulsa can accommodate just under 20,000; participants will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. People have been lining up for days to secure their places.
However, when Covid-19 cases are on the rise in Oklahoma – the state has seen new cases confirmed more than double from the previous week, according to Johns Hopkins University data analysis – and in neighboring Texas, a rally can be prescribed for super-spreading events. .
Participants will not be asked to maintain social distance or wear masks at the rally tonight, although the Trump administration’s public health official stressed the importance of these two steps in preventing the spread of coronavirus.
Social distance will almost certainly not be possible if the arena is filled with anything approaching capacity.
Participants might shout and shout (and drive the drops further and faster than if they were speaking calmly).
There may be social pressure not to wear masks, because many Trump supporters have ridiculed the use of masks during the pandemic, and Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he thought some people used them to signify their disapproval.
“We know what makes transmission of the virus more frequent, and that includes close contact, especially without masks, crowds, [being] indoors versus outdoors, the duration of contact, and then screaming also increase the chance of transmission, “said Catherine Troisi, epidemiologist of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston.
“There will be tens of thousands of people present. So, this is a good place to spread the virus. And from what I understand, this isn’t just people who live in Tulsa. There are people who come from far to go to public meetings, so they “they will return to their hometown, and so we can see it spread outside the Tulsa area,” he continued.
