While being asked “Are you a super spreader, sir?" US President Donald Trump left Walter Reed Hospital via Marine One helicopter Monday to return to the White House, and the campaign trail. Apparently, Trump was bored with the hospital already. Insiders were saying he is “done with it.” Normally, remdesivir is given only in a hospital setting, but his doctors are planning to give him the fifth, and final dose, at the White House today. His doctors are justifying his early release by pointing out that the White House has fully staffed, state-of-the-art medical facilities, with the equivalent of an ICU room. With all that at home, and his illness being so mild, it's likely he never really needed to go to the hospital at all, but coming, or going, you can bet it was Trump, and not his doctor, that was calling the shots. I mean shots, as in film. This has all been political theater, a Trump Production,
Both the video message he sent out yesterday:
“It's been a very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID, I learned it by really going to school. I get it, and I understand it.”
And this tweet:
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
Which he sent out before he left the hospital were designed to downplay the potency of COVID-19, while re-framing his campaign in relationship to it, much as I had predicted on Saturday, when I wrote:
For eight months now, Trump has been trying to “beat” Covid as a political problem with “magic,” snake oil, and other tricks of the con man. None of that is working; a vaccine can't come soon enough, and now, between the Rose Garden fiasco, and the general uptick in cases we are seeing all over the country, he is about to lose that battle for good. So, instead, he checks himself into the hospital, and neutralizes all that. Later he can emerge victorious, saying: “It was just like the flu, just like I said.”
The most troubling thing remains its timeline, which his doctors, and the White House staff, have gone to great lengths to obscure. We have been told that the president is tested often, even daily, for the virus. So, it's hard to imagine that the disease had progressed so quickly, and so drastically, that in less than 24 hrs. after first being discovered in testing, he already required admission to the hospital, even out of an abundance of caution. Especially now, when he is being released but still, “not out of the woods yet.”
At the first briefing on Saturday Dr. Conley said Trump is “doing very well,” and they were “just 72 hours into the diagnosis now,” which he later corrected to say he meant 3 days, he also said on Saturday “in particular days seven to ten, are the most critical in determining the likely course of this illness.” Well, that would be this Wednesday through Saturday. So, given he probably didn't need the hospital when he went there, why bring him home now?
If Trump has COVID-19, which I doubt, he is lucky enough to have a very mild case, the kind that tens of thousands of Americans catch everyday, and work through in their basements without any fanfare. I think it far more likely that he isn't really sick, but the old con man saw the advantages, even the necessity, of appearing to take a loss along with everyone else, while close to a thousand Americans are dying of COVID-19 everyday, and positive test results are popping up like mushrooms, even in his inner circle. So, to deal with this messy situation at work, he simply called in sick.
On Saturday, his doctors said he had “a mild cough and some nasal congestion and fatigue.” That had been on Thursday, but that was all behind them on Saturday. Later, they said “he did have a fever Thursday into Friday,” but that was gone too, although on Sunday it was reclassified as a “high fever.” On Sunday, they also said he had "two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation,” and he was given 2 liters of supplemental oxygen one time. They “debated the reasons for this," because transient drops in oxygen saturation, can be caused by many things besides COVID. For example, it is commonly associated with COPD and sleep apnea. According to this article “Normal oxygen saturation levels range between 95% and 100%.” Home oximetry, used to measure this at home are designed to trigger for a drop of more than 4% below a person's normal daytime level for at least five minutes. Dr. Conley said that late Friday morning Trump had a high fever, “and his oxygen saturation was transiently dipping below 94%," so it might have made the machine go beep.
The whole problem with trying to read these tea leaves left by his doctors is that Trump has no credibility, and he is giving the orders, not them. Therefore, his doctors have no credibility. I would really like to see enough information to determine whether his COVID was “slim” or “none,” because I wouldn't put it past him to make the whole thing up. That might have looked like a smart move, given the circumstances. Or he may have genuinely caught a mild case, just like 7 million other Americans, and played it into the same con. I don't know; when I looked at him squeezing at the top of the stairs last night...One thing is certain, if he doesn't already have COVID, and he goes back into his White House maskless, he soon will have it.
Clay Claiborne
My other posts on Trump's illness:Is Trump really sick?
Trump's doctor isn't a very good Spin Doctor
No comments:
Post a Comment