TRENTON, NJ – After nearly two years of vaccine shaming and virus shaming New Jersey residents, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said his wife Tammy did everything right…and still contracted the virus. Tammy Murphy tested positive for COVID-19 this weekend after returning from a family trip to Costa Rica. Husband Phil says he believes she contracted the virus from a family friend who they were in close contact with and not from the family’s Central American vacation.
“I want to thank everybody who has reached out both to the First Lady and to me to get to the First Lady over the past 24 hours with well wishes since her positive test yesterday,” Murphy said. “She continues to be asymptomatic and in good spirits and God willing will remain so, but certainly this occurrence necessitated that we move today’s briefing to its virtual format. I have tested negative. I tested today negative, yesterday negative, a handful of days ago – I think three negatives in six days. We’ll both continue to test regularly, and we’ll closely continue to adhere to all CDC guidelines during this time. A couple of lessons pop out from Tammy’s experience, which I’ll come to at the end of my remarks. With that, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Murphy said he now realizes the COVID-19 vaccines don’t actually stop the virus from spreading, but insists Tammy’s asymptomatic infection is no fault of her own.
“By the way, as a family had just tested literally a couple of days before,” Murphy said. “We heard that somebody in our inner orbit in New Jersey – a non-family member came to us on Saturday afternoon came to us and said they had each tested positive.”
Murphy said the entire family arranged for tests on Monday morning.
“Tammy came up – by the way, no symptoms – came up positive,” he said. “She took another test this morning and came up positive again. I came up negative yesterday and today, and I had come up negative a few days before had all the other members of the family, so there were two takeaways for us. Number one, this thing is crazy transmissible because Tammy had done and continues to do all the right things. Not just masking, double masking, social distance, double vax, boosted, the whole shooting works.”
Murphy continued, saying his second lesson is that the omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is easy to spread and easy to catch, and vaccines and boosters won’t stop the transmission, but he credits them for her lack of symptoms.
“Don’t underestimate how easily you can get infected from this thing, but the other lesson is I sit here – and please God this continues to be the case – she had no clue that she had it. She had zero symptoms. She still has zero symptoms. To me, that’s the bigger headline,” Murphy said. “If you do the right thing, you’re double vaccinated, you’re boosted, you do everything according to the guidance that we know works, you may get it because it’s so crazy transmissible.”