Dr. Jonathan Reiner Calls Out Trump for Flouting Covid Safety Rules at Packed Campaign Events: His Maskless Rallygoers Are ‘Lemmings Heading for the Cliff’

CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner called out President Donald Trump for continuing to hold campaign events in the fides of the coronavirus pandemic where rallygoers are not socially distanced few are wearing masks.

Appearing on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, the cardiologist from George Washington University warned of the dangers of the Trump campaign slipping back into a pre-Covid posture on the campaign trail — and of the president tacitly encouraging his supporters to flout coronavirus prevention best practices.

“Tonight the death toll in the United States from coronavirus is nearing 190,000. More than 6.3 million Americans have contracted the virus. President Trump holding a big crowded campaign rally in North Carolina tonight. Very little social distancing. Very few people wearing masks,”  Lemon noted. “So, I asked you, I said is it a super-spreader event? Was that really a question. Is it?”

“No. This is a pandemic. You can’t just put people shoulder to shoulder and expect nothing will happen,” Reiner said. “The president likes to put on this tough guy facade, that the virus doesn’t effect him. And he likes this tableau behind him of unmasked people who follow along. When I see that it makes me sad.”

Trump’s outdoor campaign event came just two days after a new study estimated that the massive rally of 500,000 mostly unmasked motorcyclists in Sturgis, South Dakota last month was a massive super-spreader event, resulting in 250,000 new cases that could result in public health costs totaling $12 billion.

“What you are seeing is lemmings heading for the cliff,” Reiner warned. “We know that if this interesting online tool from Georgia Tech that enables you to estimate in any county in the United States in a crowd of any size, what the likelihood is that they’ll be one Covid-19 positive person in the crowd. So if you look at North Carolina, where the president was this evening. And the crowd that size. 99% chance that someone in the crowd is Covid-19 positive. It can be a super-spreader event. Like the Sturgis event. If you look a week out from the number of cases in South Dakota skyrocketed. The curve is vertical. So, the president has the blatant disregard for the welfare of his supporters. We’ve seen it time and time again.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.