The number of U.S. coronavirus cases continues to climb. The director of the CDC expects “more deaths per day than we had at 9/11” for the next two or three months. Many hospitals across the country are being pushed to the breaking point.
It was against this backdrop that an incoming House Republican appeared at a pro-Trump rally in the nation’s capital on Saturday and delivered a ridiculous assessment about the crisis.
Virginia Congressman-elect Bob Good (R-VA) called COVID-19 a “phony pandemic” at a right-wing rally Saturday. The Republican representative said to the crowd in Washington, D.C., “This looks like a group of people that gets it. This is a phony pandemic. It’s a serious virus, but it’s a virus. It’s not a pandemic.”
Apparently, Good believed the crowd looked like “a group of people that gets it” because so much of the audience chose not to wear masks and made no effort to socially distance.
Some electoral context is probably in order. Virginia’s 5th congressional district has been surprisingly tumultuous in recent years, starting with Rep. Tom Garrett (R-Va.), who was elected in 2016, quickly got caught up in a scandal, and stepped aside after one term.
He was succeeded by Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who won election in 2018, but soon drew fire from the far-right for, among other things, officiating at an interracial same-sex marriage.
Riggleman proceeded to lose in a Republican primary to Bob Good, who worked as the athletics director at Liberty University, the Virginia school created by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell.
Good is now telling the public that the United States is in the midst of “a phony pandemic.” The congressman-elect made the comments as Riggleman’s grandmother struggles in the hospital with COVID-19.
Incidentally, Good prevailed last month by about five points over Cameron Webb, who has medical and law degrees, and who serves as the director of Health Policy and Equity at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine.
For his part, Riggleman appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in late October, and the outgoing congressman lamented, in reference to his party, “We’ve lost our way.”
Good’s comments on Saturday suggest Riggleman’s concerns have merit.
