Matthew Schlapp is the chairman of the American Conservative Union—one of the oldest conservative lobbyist groups in the country. This means that Schlapp was at the recent conservative hand shaking and fist shaking event known as CPAC. Because of this, he has been getting a ton of air time on Fox News the past few days. His job is to assure Fox viewers that everybody at the conference used tons of hand sanitizer and washed their hands frequently. He has admitted to having interacted with the VIP-level anonymous CPAC attendee who contracted the virus and has sent people like Reps. Matt Gaetz and Doug Collins into self-quarantine. But good news for Schlapp—he tested negative for the virus.
This small bit of anecdotal evidence has empowered Schlapp to go on Fox News to tell everyone that the coronavirus isn’t a big problem. His main, scientifically inaccurate thesis is that because—so far—no one seems to have contracted the virus from the ill CPAC individual, that means it’s not very contagious. You can watch Schlapp explaining his airtight theory below, but it amounts to this: “I think coming out of CPAC, one thing we've learned is, even when there's an infected person among thousands, in our case over 10,000 people, it is very, very difficult to contract this virus."
”We” haven’t learned that. “You” believe that, because you shook a guy’s hand, and luckily didn’t contract the virus. Schlapp’s assertion isn’t a real thing. So far, scientists don’t know exactly how contagious the COVID-19 strain of the virus actually is—nor do we know if and when the virus is most contagious. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have put the incubation time of the virus (the period after contracting, before someone begins to show symptoms) at a little over five days. This makes the 14-day quarantine time a safe and protective number. It also doesn’t take into account that most viruses are less contagious during incubation and more contagious once symptoms begin. But, again, scientists studying the virus have not been able to conclude anything definitively.
This hasn’t stopped Fox News from misinforming their predominantly high-risk demographic. Schlapp went on fairytale goblin Laura Ingraham’s show to give the same unscientific assessment of events.
Ingraham, because she still owes Beelzebub her soul, used that to attack Democratic-leaning Americans. Stay classy, you anti-science oligarchs!