So it seems the United States has undertaken a fascinating experiment to see just how vulnerable septuagenarian presidential contenders in large crowds several times a week are to the coronavirus. Though death is unlikely—that increases dramatically after eighty—were any of them to fall ill to the virus they would certainly have to be hospitalized and quarantined, and I have no idea how long the hospital stay would be and when they’d be healthy enough to return to campaigning (let alone being president.) Even if the disease proves to be mild for most people it would likely still be severe for anyone in their seventies, perhaps even dangerously so. It’s hard to get around the fact that a presidential campaign in a rapidly expanding pandemic leaves candidates Biden, Sanders and Trump extremely vulnerable to getting very, very ill. Our presidential candidates are supposed to be seen personally by literally millions of people, wade into crowds, press the flesh, shake a zillion hands, kiss hundreds of babies, meet thousands of reporters, stay in hundreds of hotels and takes hundreds of trips by air. They must do everything the CDC tells you never to do.

And then there’s the matter of testing everyone each had been in contact with and then quarantining the infected among them, not to mention the possibility of having to hospitalize some of those people as well. There are very few people who meet as many people as a presidential candidate in the heat of a campaign. Each, once infected, would be an extraordinarily effective disease vector, a Typhoid Mary gone meta, viral gone viral. Just the selfies alone hold extraordinary potential for exponential virus transmission. An iPhone is exquisitely designed to transfer the coronavirus from one victim to another with a swipe of the screen.

Interesting scenarios at the very least.