Again, you haven't defined risk. I don't believe the agents feel they are being put at risk. I don't believe it either. If an agent's healthy demographic says they have a .0001 chance of dying from COVID and that happens to be the CFR for their demographic with the flu (I am just making up numbers to prove a point) then there's no additional risk to the event than any other event any other President has hosted during the course of their tenure.
So, the media is lying? Including WP? They will risk their award-winning journalism to somehow score cheap points?
They already have gone through the third and fourth string. And now every Secret Service agent who is within six feet of the President or stuck in the automobile with him must be quarantined for 14 days directly after their rotation ends. Not a pretty situation.
You are telling me a SS agent can say "Not feeling good about covid and would rather not work today protecting the Prez" Guess who would get permanently removed from pres detail. So they are supposed to risk their lives daily but suddenly have the power to turn down an assignment? Unlikely. Protecting the President only goes to elite agents who have passed vigorous screening and tests and have put in time in the Secret Service. It is like saying the Navy has thousands of people who can simply step in for a Navy Seal who decided to turn his back on his duty. Also the secret service is not just responsible for protecting the Prez so there are not 3200 agents all standing around Trump. let's just not use a false premise when talking about Secret service
Angry Trump aides are calling Amy Coney Barrett’s announcement the ‘Rose Garden massacre’ after COVID-19 outbreak Members of the staff, career staffers, who are very upset about the fact that this outbreak has happened, They’re calling it the Rose Garden Massacre. It could have been prevented. Many of those career staffers have been testing positive for COVID and they do not have access to the best cutting edge technology like the president does. They could succumb to this virus. So I’m hearing things, and a lot of it is that they just don’t understand why even now the White House has not changed their mask policy. People are still being allowed to roam around the complex saying they’re optional.”
Please don't suggest the media is always 100% truthful in all that they report. The age of a special agent serving on the President's detail can be anywhere between 21 and somewhere around 45 (though it is possible they could be a few years older, though they tend to be rotated out before retirement or a "behind the lines" job). I think we can agree that they are in stellar physical shape without any pathologies or history of smoking. The entire cohort of this age group (which includes both health and not healthy) is about .2% CFR (this is taking the CDC's latest data of these age brackets divided by the number of reported cases. Again, this .2% includes all Americans, even those with co-morbidity. So the SS Agent is likely at a much, much lower rate. If you could compare this rate with that of riding in a car, or catching normal influenza or the risk of getting shot - the risk that an agent normally is exposed to every single day they show up for the job, I would be willing to bet there is no real additional risk - at least nothing quantified. This is just the media, and you, looking for one more thing to tack on to Trump being Orangeman Bad. I maintain, there are plenty of things to slam Trump for. Stuff like this isn't in that category.
Can you show me how you know this? Where is it that they have gone through the third and fourth string? Where is it that the SS is running out of agents? You obviously have the data, right? Otherwise you'd never suggest this stuff.
There's nothing - at all - false about this premise. An agent can request reassignment for just about any reason they want in the service, much less "I have someone medically at risk at home and do not wish to expose them further." If they choose not to do so, that is a choice they get to make just like every one of us who makes a choice like that every day of the week.