White House Let Nearly 10,000 Tour East Wing `Gifts from the Heart` in Days Before Christmas During COVID Closure in 2021
White House tours under Biden not held earlier in 2021 nor until April 2022
“Science” has been corrupted by politics.
Did “science” suspend COVID viral transmission for nine days for those attending the White House “Gifts from the Heart” tour before Christmas in 2021?
A review of White House Statements and Releases shows an article on Nov. 29, 2021: First Lady Jill Biden Announces 2021 White House Holiday Theme: Gifts from the Heart.
An AP news story via WINK News on the day the exhibit opened indicated public tours remain suspended due to COVID-19.
The White House may see less foot traffic this holiday season as public tours remain suspended due to COVID-19, but videos, photos and details about the Christmas decorations are to be made available for viewing at WhiteHouse.gov/Holidays.
Public tours were suspended but nearly 10,000 were allowed to view Gifts from the Heart? Who were those 10,000 allowed to attend?
Chart
A bar plot of White House Visitors Logs shows a spike in tourist visits to the White House in December 2021.
The visitor logs may be the only public disclosure of the Biden holiday tourist visitors in Dec. 2021. Do news reports exist?
The chart shows increasing tourist numbers starting in April 2022, which was the result of a partial opening of tours on April 15, 2022. Tours resumed a full schedule on July 19, 2022.
The Biden-Harris Administration is pleased to announce public tours of the White House will resume a full operating schedule from Tuesdays through Saturdays beginning on Tuesday, July 19, 2022. Public tours will be available from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, excluding Federal holidays or unless otherwise noted. All White House tours are free of charge.
Data
Details of Dec. 2021 Tourist Visits
The 9,829 tourist visitors from Dec. 2021 appeared at the White House in 402 scheduled events. More than half of these events were for one or two visitors. The largest event had 112. Four events were cancelled.
VISITEE. All Dec. 2021 “tourist” visitors reported to the “Visitors Office.” [VISITEE was “office|visitor”, “office|visitors” or “visitors”. I classify visitors as “tourists” when they do not visit a named person.]
LOCATION. The locations of the visits were 10 different variations of “East Wing.”
CALLER. Thirteen “CALLERs” scheduled the Dec. 2021 visits. Peyton Schwartz scheduled 4,055 and Candace Johnson scheduled 3,622.
See “Related” link at bottom for additional processing details.
Names of Visitors
Download and review the list of all 9,829 “Gifts from the Heart” visitors in an Excel file.
Caution: matching only by name can be tricky. Many “false positives” can occur, especially with common names. Often a group of connected names in the same event is a better match.
Can readers find notable names in this list? Perhaps crowd sourcing the look at this list can help identify patterns?
Days
Hours
2021 Holiday Guide
This 2021 Holidays at the White House page is a wonderful picture gallery of Gifts from the Heart, which includes a link to a 20-page Holiday Guide.
White House Tours During COVID Under Trump
In Sept. 2020 CNN reported White House tours resumed after a six-month hiatus.
White House tours are set to resume after a six-month hiatus starting Saturday, September 12, first lady Melania Trump’s office announced Tuesday. …
The White House tours abruptly stopped on March 12 as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread across the United States.
White House tours were held after the election as late as mid-December according to a Dec. 15, 2020 article in Washingtonian.
Is the People’s House really still hosting public tours amid a global pandemic?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is yes.
The New York Times reported Trump held at least 20 White House parties in the holiday season in 2020.
However, the Trump administration never released White House Visitor Logs.
Related
Details are in a GitHub repository described in the link below. Look for the script 3-WhiteHouse-Tourist-Visitors-2021-12.html.