Aware of his extensive travel and compromised health, Sen. Rand Paul quietly got himself tested for the novel coronavirus on March 16.
But for the six days that his results were pending, the Kentucky Republican took no steps to self-quarantine — continuing to cast votes on the Senate floor, delivering a speech lambasting a coronavirus aid bill, and meeting with other GOP senators in strategy sessions that defied federal advisories warning against gatherings of more than 10 people.
Paul even squeezed in a round of golf at a private club on an unseasonably warm spring day in Northern Virginia late last week and worked out Sunday in the senators-only gym at the Capitol Hill complex just hours before he was informed that he had indeed tested positive for covid-19, the disease the virus causes.