(Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for DGA)
If it hasn’t become readily apparent by now, the coronavirus outbreak isn’t a hoax. Thus far, while more than 35,000 Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19, it’s likely that hundreds of thousands more are carriers who have yet to be tested or formally diagnosed. One of the latest people to receive such a diagnosis is the husband of a former Democratic presidential candidate.
Earlier today, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) announced that her husband, John Bessler, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, tested positive for coronavirus. Here’s what the senator said on Twitter this morning:
On her official Medium page, she explains what happened to her husband:
John started to feel sick when I was in Minnesota and he was in Washington D.C. and like so many others who have had the disease, he thought it was just a cold. Yet he immediately quarantined himself just in case and stopped going to his job teaching in Baltimore. He kept having a temperature and a bad, bad cough and when he started coughing up blood he got a test and a chest X-ray and they checked him into a hospital in Virginia because of a variety of things including very low oxygen levels which haven’t really improved. He now has pneumonia and is on oxygen but not a ventilator.
Klobuchar herself is outside of the 14-day infection period, and she doesn’t plan to be tested. Bessler remains hospitalized, and Klobuchar describes him as being “exhausted and sick but a very strong and resilient person.” Baltimore Law has yet to post an announcement about Bessler’s diagnosis on its website, but the school moved all of its classes online starting today. It is unknown whether Bessler had any contact with students or faculty over the course of the past two weeks.
“I love my husband so very much and not being able to be there at the hospital by his side is one of the hardest things about this disease,” Klobuchar wrote. “I know so many Americans are going through this and so much worse right now. So I hope and pray for you, just as I hope you will do for my husband.”
Best wishes to Professor Bessler for a speedy recovery.
Statement from Senator Amy Klobuchar [Medium]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.