In the House: In a display of the reach and threat of the coronavirus, three top members of the President’s coronavirus task force, including the epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, are in isolation after exposure to White House staffers who tested positive for the virus.

  It’s in the White House, everyone. Consequently the President, Vice President, and close White House staffers are tested every day. 

  The two others gone to voluntary quarantine are Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

  A presidential valet, the vice president’s press secretary, and a personal aide to Ivanka Trump have all tested positive for  the virus that President Trump once said would magically go away. 

  Fauci said he can work from home while Redfield and Hahn say they will testify before a Senate committee on Tuesday by video conference.

  The swine flu never got into the White House, but Trump tweeted, “We are getting great marks for the handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA. Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls – didn’t have a clue!”

The Stat Board: As of this morning, 79,528 Americans have died of the coronavirus. A University of Washington estimate says that number will grow  to 137,000 by August.

  In leaked audio of a private phone call President Obama held with Democratic supporters, the former President said the pandemic in the US “would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster.”

Open for Business: A lot of Americans are becoming restive under closure orders. Protests were held around the country yesterday by people demanding the re-opening of the economy. Gunfire broke out at a protest in Ft. Worth, Texas and the beach in Naples, Florida became so crowded, authorities closed it.

  In Castle Rock, Colorado, C&C Coffee and Kitchen opened in defiance of closure orders to a Mother’s Day crowd that appeared to be ignoring social distancing and the wearing of masks. 

Revenge of the Virus: Virologist Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, wrote about his experience nearly dying of the coronavirus. One of the discoverers of the deadly Ebola virus in 1976, Piot wrote of his recent illness, “They got me, I sometimes thought. I have devoted my life to fighting viruses and finally, they get their revenge.” 

  Piot says, “Many people will be left with chronic kidney and heart problems. Even their neural system is disrupted. There will be hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, possibly more, who will need treatments such as renal dialysis for the rest of their lives.”

  In one of his darker passages, Piot writes, “Without a coronavirus vaccine, we will never be able to live normally again. The only real exit strategy from this crisis is a vaccine that can be rolled out worldwide. That means producing billions of doses of it, which, in itself, is a huge challenge in terms of manufacturing logistics. And despite the efforts, it is still not even certain that developing a COVID-19 vaccine is possible.”

The Bulletin Board: On “Fox News Sunday,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that while the reported unemployment rate is 14.7 percent,  the real unemployment number “could be” closer to 25 percent. — Seventy-two out of 314 residents of a New Jersey veterans’ home have died of the coronavirus. — Nineteen people are dead after an Iranian warship was accidentally hit by a missile from another ship during a naval exercise.

The Obit Page: Jerry Stiller who was half the famous comedy team of Stiller and Meara, and the father of actor Ben Stiller, has died at age 92. Stiller had a long career on stage, film, and television, but he was originally known playing off his wife Anne Meara in the kind of comedy act that would appear on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” Meara  died in 2015.

 — The flamboyant rocker known as Little Richard who fused the music of gospel and blues into electric celebration in the early days of rock ‘n roll, has died of cancer at age 87. As much as anyone, Little Richard put the sex and “a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop” into rock and roll.

  The original lyrics to his first 1950s hit “Tutti Frutti were:

“Tutti Frutti, good booty
 If it don’t fit, don’t force it
 You can grease it, make it easy.”

  They were tamed for radio audiences into:

  “Tutti Frutti, aw rooty
    Tutti Frutti, aw rooty.”

  Richard, whose name was Richard Penniman, had a long list of immortal rock hits including; “Long Tall Sally, Lucille, and Good Golly Miss Molly with the lyric, “sure like to ball.”

  Richard slipped in and out of performing, spending a good deal of his life as a preacher and Bible salesman. But he kept coming back to the stage.

  He was a show unto himself. Richard once told an interviewer,  “I am the innovator! I am the originator! I am the emancipator! I am the architect! I’m rock & roll!” The he added, “Now I am not saying that to be vain or conceited.”

One More Passing: Francis X. Fay, a longtime reporter for The Hour newspaper in Norwalk, Connecticut, who covered the editor of The Rooney Report when he played Little League baseball in Rowayton, has died at age 89.

  He was a fixture in the little town on Long Island Sound where there was one cop, one lifeguard, and the fathers commuted to work in New York. Frank knew all the kids in town. He was a great conversationalist and slow eater. Everyone else at the table would be having coffee and Frank’s plate was still half full. 

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