The highly contagious virus that's killed nearly 100 thousand Americans manifests in different ways. Months into the outbreak, medical experts discovered that while some of the infected experienced brutal symptoms requiring a ventilator, many of those who tested positive showed no symptoms at all.
As a result, health officials in the United States warned that everyone needed to spend as much time as possible in their homes. They also stressed the importance of wearing masks or other facial coverings when in public.
The masks aren't to keep the wearer from contracting the virus, but to keep potential asymptomatic carriers from spreading the virus to others.
When President Donald Trump announced these new guidelines early last month, he stressed that these were just recommendations and that he wouldn't be wearing one himself. In a recent visit to a PPE factory in Michigan, the President wore a mask in private, but said he wouldn't "give the press the pleasure" of seeing him in a mask, implying that a mask made him look weak.
The President's presumptive 2020 Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, took a different approach this Memorial Day, wearing a black face mask and his trademark Aviator sunglasses as he and his wife—Dr. Jill Biden—placed a wreath at a veterans' memorial near his house in Delaware. It was the first time he'd emerged in public in two months.
Biden's choice to wear a face mask caught the attention of Fox News's Brit Hume, who said it illustrated why Trump didn't want to wear one.
If Hume's intent was to say Biden looked weak, he was met with widespread disagreement.
Hume was quickly met with intense backlash from the Twittersphere, with thousands chastising him for downplaying health expert recommendations in order to please the President.
Besides, if it's looks that Brit is concerned with, people pointed out that Biden actually looks pretty cool.
Nevertheless, Trump retweeted Hume's post to his 80 million followers, bolstering the implication that masks are an unnecessary sign of weakness.
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