Three San Jose TSA agents test positive for coronavirus
Employees worked at Terminal B during the night shift, a union official said
SAN JOSE >> Three Transportation Security Administration officers at Mineta San Jose International Airport have tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the quarantining of 42 workers and cleaning procedures. But TSA has so far declined to reveal any information about what those workers did at the airport — and therefore what kind of risk there was to the traveling public.
According to a statement from the agency late Tuesday, the officers who tested positive are receiving medical care and all TSA employees they have come into contact with over the past 14 days are quarantined at home.
“Screening checkpoints remain open and the agency is working with the CDC, as well as the California Department of Public Health and the Santa Clara County Public Health De
being flexible and adaptable at reaching voters.”
Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, the two remaining major Democratic contenders for the White House, both canceled election night rallies planned in Ohio on Tuesday out of public health concerns. Biden also canceled others planned over the next week in Chicago, Tampa and Miami, replacing them with virtual events. And Trump is facing pressure to call off his own rallies, although his campaign hasn’t said whether it will do so.
But it’s likely the COVID-19 epidemic will force all three candidates — who, at over 70 years old, are personally at elevated risk from the virus — to find new ways to reach voters. It could also reshape the dynamics of the race, putting an even bigger focus on health care policy and crisis management.
So far, local governments in San Francisco and Santa Clara County have banned events with more than 1,000 people, while the Seattle region has restricted
gatherings of more than 250 people. Experts say similar measures are likely elsewhere as the virus continues to spread.
Just a week and a day before Santa Clara County put its ban in place, Sanders attracted 9,500 people to the San Jose Convention Center’s hangar-like South Hall, where his fans packed together and cheered after his every sentence. His campaign said local officials had expressed no concerns about the rally at the time.
Robert Siegel, a Stanford professor of microbiology and immunology, said large gatherings in enclosed spaces — such as political rallies — are ideal locations for coronavirus or other diseases to spread.
“People coming from all over, in close proximity and in high numbers — that’s the kind of thing that viruses dream about at night,” he said.
In another change, the debate between Biden and Sanders in Phoenix on Sunday will have no live studio audience, the first debate this campaign cycle to lack one.
But rallies and debates are only the most visible examples of campaigning that could be disrupted by
the epidemic. Campaigns could be forced to call off door-knocking programs, which send thousands of volunteers around the country to talk to voters face-toface. And Biden and Trump could have to curtail their schedule of high-dollar, closed-door fundraisers, which represent a significant source of funds for both of their campaigns.
Political strategists say that campaigns at every level will be forced to make greater use of phone banking, text messaging and email services to get their message out to voters. Sanders’ campaign says they’ll be testing online town halls.
But it remains to be seen whether voters will respond as well to those methods as they do to the adrenaline rush of a huge rally or the human connection of a volunteer on their doorstep.
“If voters can see I’m another human being standing across from them, it’s a very powerful form of organizing that you can’t replicate digitally,” said Kenneth Pennington, a Democratic consultant and the digital director for Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. “I don’t know anything replaces the impact you have from a personal, one-on-one
interaction.”
Online and TV advertising will also likely play a bigger role in the race, as the news media shifts its focus from covering politics to covering the virus.
While canceled fundraising events wouldn’t hurt Sanders, who raises his money through small-dollar donors online, his campaign could be dealt an especially strong blow due to its focus of on-the-ground organizing and big rallies. Sanders spokeswoman Anna Bahr said the campaign is not making any changes to its ground operations but all future rallies and events would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
In addition to the strategic decisions about campaigning, coronavirus will also shape the issues at debate in the race.
Already, Democrats are hitting Trump over his government’s slow response to the crisis. And while health care has been one of the top issues in the Democratic primary over the last year, the epidemic is likely to bring it home to voters even more strongly.
“We have a federal government that continues to propose cuts to the CDC
and disease control in its budget, that dismantled the pandemic response team in the White House, that has not made the investments we need,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California. “This will be front and center in the campaign.”
LaBolt predicted that the epidemic could have the same sort of impact on the 2020 race that the 2008 financial crisis did in that year’s election, when Obama was able to cast himself as a steady leader by helping negotiate a bailout package for the banks.
“A crisis of this nature and this scale can shift the dynamics of the race pretty significantly,” LaBolt said. “It’s not a time for an erratic, hotheaded manager — and that provides an opportunity for Biden,” who has pitched himself as a return to stability for the country.
Meanwhile, Sanders has argued that the crisis proves one of the central arguments of his campaign, that the U.S. health care system needs drastic reform.
“Imagine facing a pandemic and having 87 million people who are having
a difficult time going to the doctor when they need to,” the Vermont senator said at a news conference Wednesday after several big losses in primaries on Tuesday.
And then there’s the question of how the virus might also impact voting and governing, now that the virus is present in 38 states and Washington, D.C. Some observers have called for a massive expansion of voteby-mail ballots for the November general election, in case voters are too scared to come to the polls in person.
And Congress has already been affected — a half-dozen members have entered self-isolation out of fears that they interacted with someone who tested positive for the disease, and at least two of those representatives had close contact with Trump in recent days.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein — who at 86 is the oldest member of the Senate — told reporters Wednesday that she thought Capitol Hill should shut down for the next few weeks to avoid risking the spread of coronavirus, unless the number of cases starts decreasing.
“I’m worried about the fact that we need to close this place down,” she said. “I really believe that now.”