The U.S. Coast Guard vice commander, Adm. Charles Ray, tested positive for coronavirus after attending meetings at the Pentagon last week. As those meetings included most of the Joint Chiefs of the military and some of their staff, most of the Joint Chiefs have gone into quarantine.
Ray is not a member of the Joint Chiefs, the nation’s top military officers, but he was at Pentagon meetings last week with others who are.
It’s not clear how Ray was infected, though he did attend a White House ceremony on Sept. 27, just one day after President Trump introduced Amy Coney Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee. Multiple people at that event contracted COVID.
Barrett has tested negative thus far. She and her husband both had the coronavirus over the summer and have since recovered. None of the military members who’ve entered quarantine due to the positive test of Adm. Ray have exhibited any symptoms. President Trump, aide Stephen Miller, and several other figures in the administration have tested positive and as the whole world knows, Trump spent a couple of days at Walter Reed before being discharged Monday night and returning to the White House.
The U.S. Marine Corps commander, Gen. David Berger, did not attend the meetings with Ray and is the only member of the Joint Chiefs not in quarantine.
Seems about right. One of the Marine Corps’ mottos is “first to go, last to know.”
Jokes aside, this is obviously a serious situation but less serious than it probably seems at first glance. None of the officers have actually tested positive other than Ray, and Ray is not showing symptoms at this time. Our military’s command-and-control structure is the world’s best and will not be affected by the quarantine. Their communications won’t be disrupted in the slightest.
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