One piece of news out of the G20 this weekend involves someone who didn’t even go to Rome or to the climate summit. That would be White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. She had been scheduled to travel with the President, but just as they were getting ready to leave for the flight, she tested positive for COVID and her trip had to be scrapped while she goes into quarantine. Psaki is fully vaccinated, so if the test results are accurate she must be one of those “breakthrough” infection cases we keep hearing about. But does she really have the virus? We might need to wait a little while to know for sure. (Associated Press)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday she has contracted COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms.

Psaki, 42, said she was last in contact with President Joe Biden on Tuesday, when she met him in the White House, where they were more than 6 feet apart and wearing masks. Biden, who is tested frequently, last tested negative on Saturday, according to the White House.

Psaki did not accompany Biden on his trip abroad to Rome this weekend for the Group of 20 summit and next Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday for a U.N. climate summit.

Psaki reportedly tested negative every day from Wednesday through Saturday, but then tested positive. She was testing daily because “members of her household” had tested positive on Wednesday. She reports having “mild symptoms” of COVID, but mild symptoms could be anything from the novel coronavirus to the common cold. (Which is also caused by a form of coronavirus, by the way.) Still, I can see how this would be too much of a red flag to put her on Air Force One.

The questions surrounding her diagnosis once again bring up the nagging issue that we’ve been dealing with all year. How often are we being fed infection rate data that includes false positives? The CDC guidance on this issue admits that false positives are returned for all in vitro diagnostic tests. What they don’t provide is the likelihood of this happening. Instead, they offer some vaguely worded guidelines about how false positives are prevalent “especially when used in communities where the prevalence of infection is low.” In other words, if you test positive and there aren’t a lot of infected people around, the test result might be false. But if there are a lot of sick people in the area, it’s probably accurate. And that’s just super helpful, right?

Psaki only has about six months left on the job, so this was her last chance to go to the G20. (She has two young children and doesn’t want to miss seeing them grow up, which is totally understandable.) Unfortunately, assuming she really is infected, she’s going to be the poster child for the breakthrough infection question. She was among the first to be vaccinated after the vaccines received emergency approval, so unless she’s had a booster shot (and there’s no record of that, though both Biden and Harris have been given boosters), her vaccination is more than six months old.

As we discussed this weekend when looking at the outbreak in Vermont, it’s looking increasingly as if these supposedly miraculous vaccines have a definite shelf life and it’s not very long. If a fully vaccinated person like Psaki can be infected this soon after getting her shots, then we clearly haven’t collected enough data yet. I was speaking with a Twitter friend this weekend who went to her doctor for an antibody test this past week. She had been vaccinated in April and claims that her doctor told her she has “zero, zip” antibodies as of now. That’s far worse than the 50% levels that had been predicted by the CDC.

I don’t wish this disease on anyone and I hope Psaki makes a full and complete recovery soon. Her example, however, should offer us an opportunity to demand that the CDC get more long-term test results, specifically including antibody resilience over time, from the major pharmaceutical companies.