Turns out there's an upside to getting COVID-19 while working for Trump - you lose your sense of smell.
Oct 6, 2020
Today's Tweet
It takes longer and longer to list the shitty things he's said and done - even when you trim it down to the "highlights".
"Army for Trump" No thanks, we'll go with #NoMoreTrumppic.twitter.com/GkIq18f3la
— The Protest Films (@TheProtestFilms) October 5, 2020
Oct 5, 2020
President Stoopid Out For A Ride
He got bored.
Current and former Secret Service agents and medical professionals were aghast Sunday night at President Trump’s trip outside the hospital where he is being treated for the coronavirus, saying the president endangered those inside his SUV for a publicity stunt.
As the backlash grew, multiple aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations also called Trump’s evening outing an unnecessary risk — but said it was not surprising. Trump had said he was bored in the hospital, advisers said. He wanted to show strength after his chief of staff offered a grimmer assessment of his health than doctors, according to campaign and White House officials.
A growing number of Secret Service agents have been concerned about the president’s seeming indifference to the health risks they face when traveling with him in public, and a few reacted with outrage to the trip, asking how Trump’s desire to be seen outside his hospital suite justified the jeopardy to agents protecting him. Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis has already brought new scrutiny to his lax approach to social distancing, as public health officials scramble to trace those he may have exposed at large in-person events.
“He’s not even pretending to care now,” one agent said after the president’s jaunt outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to wave at supportive crowds.
“Where are the adults?” said a former Secret Service member.
They spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
White House spokesman Judd Deere defended the outing, telling reporters “appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all those supporting it.” Deere said precautions included personal protective equipment, without providing further details, and added the trip “was cleared by the medical team as safe to do.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions from The Washington Post on Sunday night.
Trump wore a mask as he waved from the back of his vehicle, after announcing he would “pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street.” But the face covering was little comfort to doctors, who took to Twitter to criticize the trip as irresponsible. Masks “help, but they are not an impenetrable force field,” tweeted Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.
Axios:
White House crises of competence and credibility grew during a botched weekend that left even White House aides dismayed and befuddled.
Many complained bitterly about the leadership of chief of staff Mark Meadows.
After days of internal and external snafus as the virus spread through all levels of the White House, President Trump left his hospital suite just before 5:30 p.m. yesterday, and took an SUV ride outside the Walter Reed gates to wave at the supporters who have lined the road ever since he arrived Friday evening.
“Where are the adults?” said a former Secret Service member.
They spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
White House spokesman Judd Deere defended the outing, telling reporters “appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all those supporting it.” Deere said precautions included personal protective equipment, without providing further details, and added the trip “was cleared by the medical team as safe to do.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions from The Washington Post on Sunday night.
Trump wore a mask as he waved from the back of his vehicle, after announcing he would “pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street.” But the face covering was little comfort to doctors, who took to Twitter to criticize the trip as irresponsible. Masks “help, but they are not an impenetrable force field,” tweeted Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.
Axios:
White House crises of competence and credibility grew during a botched weekend that left even White House aides dismayed and befuddled.
Many complained bitterly about the leadership of chief of staff Mark Meadows.
After days of internal and external snafus as the virus spread through all levels of the White House, President Trump left his hospital suite just before 5:30 p.m. yesterday, and took an SUV ride outside the Walter Reed gates to wave at the supporters who have lined the road ever since he arrived Friday evening.
- Trump wore a mask, but the stunt risked exposing the Secret Service agents in the Suburban.
- Two senior White House staffers said they thought the P.R. stunt was selfish, and compounded a weekend of horrible decisions.
- White House spokesman Judd Deere said: "Appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the President and all those supporting it, including PPE. The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do."
- By contrast, the first lady’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, emailed her staff on Saturday advising them to work from home and reminding them of CDC guidance.
- And the vice president’s chief, Marc Short, emailed his senior staff at 3 a.m. Friday with an update on the president’s situation and urged them to work from home. Short also had a conference call with his staff on Saturday to take questions and explain the protocol and situation.
- The White House finally emailed staff with guidance at 8:18 last night — about 15 minutes after Axios contacted the press shop for a story about the lack of guidance. A senior official insisted the guidance email was "pre-scheduled."
- The impersonal email, signed "White House Management Office," mentioned nothing about the new circumstances, and was almost identical to formulaic emails that had gone out to the staff at previous intervals before POTUS and multiple other West Wing officials got sick.
- West Wing staff were privately circulating an unsparing indictment by Politico’s Tim Alberta, "How Mark Meadows Became the White House’s Unreliable Source."
- Another senior official added: "Peanut gallery criticism like this is absurd and unfair — guidance has long been in place for what to do in the event of a West Wing case, as it has for best practices, testing, teleworking, etc. Meadows has been at Walter Reed with the President managing a million different logistical concerns since Friday. But apologies if anyone had to wait a couple extra hours to receive their updated email on Sunday."
The White House's public communication about the virus has been a debacle of deception and contradictory information.
- The White House physician, Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley, admitted at yesterday's briefing that he had painted an overly rosy picture the day before:
- "I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness has had. I didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so, you know, it came off that we're trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true."
- Yesterday, another briefer, Dr. Brian Garibaldi, said: "[I]f he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow."
COVID-19 Update
USA
Covid-19 Continues Its Ever-Changing Onslaught on the U.S.
The infection of President Trump and some of his top associates makes clear that the country is still in the throes of the pandemic.
Covid-19 has proved itself an unpredictable and ever-changing threat. As President Trump and some of his allies and associates test positive for the coronavirus, the number of new cases reported each day across the United States has been slowly rising. The nation’s response has been uneven and inconsistent. Here is where the country is now.
The U.S. is at a key moment in the pandemic.
Spread of the virus could worsen significantly through the autumn, experts fear, as colder weather forces people indoors. Winter, paired with a new flu season, could make the precarious situation of today even worse. Every day, some 43,000 new cases are being reported — far fewer than were being identified during the surge in the summer, but still an uncomfortably large number.
From the hospital where Mr. Trump is being treated, he wrote on Twitter on Saturday, “Tremendous progress has been made over the last 6 months in fighting this PLAGUE.”
But the pace has been ticking upward slowly since the middle of September as the virus reached parts of the country that hadn’t been hit hard before. By this weekend, 7.3 million people in the United States — some of them at the highest reaches of the federal government — were known to have been infected. More than 208,000 people have died.
The Great Plains, spared early on, is struggling now.
Some of the country’s least populous states are now seeing its highest infection rates.
When coastal cities suffered in the spring, cases remained relatively scarce across most of the Northern Plains and rural West. But since late summer, North Dakota and South Dakota have added more cases per capita than any other state. Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have set troubling new records as well.
In North Dakota, state officials met with hospital executives recently to ensure there would be enough space in hospitals as cases surged around Bismarck, and health care workers said they were working overtime to meet the sudden rise. Leaders in Montana urged residents to take precautions as they warned of an uncertain new phase.
Wisconsin’s situation has become alarming.
Northeastern Wisconsin, a politically mixed region that also happens to be crucial to both parties’ hopes of winning the presidency, is facing one of the country’s most widespread, uncontrolled outbreaks right now.
By Saturday, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Three of the four American metro areas with the most recent cases per capita were in northeastern Wisconsin, with the Oshkosh area faring worst of all.
“I’m honestly not sure that anything we do right now will make a difference,” the mayor of Oshkosh, Lori Palmeri, said recently. “It’s too late.”
Across Wisconsin, warning signs mounted with few glimmers of progress. More than 3,000 new cases were announced in the state in a single day for the first time. The state set single-day records for deaths and hospitalizations. Its test positivity rate reached 20 percent, a loud signal that the outbreak in the state has spun of control.
Colleges are driving tens of thousands of new cases.
When college students returned to campuses for the fall, the coronavirus followed. University towns that had relatively few cases suddenly became hot spots. Clusters emerged in dorms, in fraternity and sorority houses, on sports teams. And in many places, in-person classes and parties and football games continued
Some of the worst trouble spots have calmed.
Misery in the Sun Belt has receded, helping to hold down the nation’s new case growth despite increases in the Midwest and West.
Summer outbreaks sent national case tallies soaring to more than 66,000 a day by late July. Arizona, California and Florida reported new records, then broke them, day after day. In some cities, officials shut down bars again and demanded that residents wear masks.
Florida is now averaging about 2,300 new cases a day, roughly one-fifth of what it was seeing at its worst. In Arizona, where overtaxed hospital capacity was once a concern, intensive care beds are now plentiful, and daily case reports have dropped to about 500 on average, down from more than 3,600. New infections have also plunged in California, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina. Mississippi, Texas and Alabama have made significant progress since midsummer as well, though case numbers there remain persistently high.
“Thankfully, we did not have a surge in Covid-19, as was predicted, after the Labor Day weekend,” Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, a Republican, said this week as she announced an extension of the state’s mask order. “But my friends, this isn’t just luck or coincidence. The fact is, our mask order that we imposed on July 16 is working, and the numbers speak for themselves.”
The question ahead is whether regions can hold on to their progress or whether new outbreaks will crop up quickly as limits are lifted and old hot spots surge again.
And the kicker - which I see as the actual intent on the part of people like Charles Koch:
- New Cases: 34,066
- New Deaths: 333
And the pattern continues, as it seems the virus takes the weekend off, but the uptick is definitely there.
We came off a peak in mid-July and got the daily count down. But then we eased up on the messaging for masks and distancing; and now as the cooler weather starts to kick in and people are headed back indoors - plus more people have to get back to work because Yertle McConnell either can't get his shit together, or he's running the Radical Libertarian play on us intending to shackle government to the emerging plutocracy - and we begin to see the upward trend that everybody and his fucking uncle have been telling us was probably gonna happen.
Covid-19 Continues Its Ever-Changing Onslaught on the U.S.
The infection of President Trump and some of his top associates makes clear that the country is still in the throes of the pandemic.
Covid-19 has proved itself an unpredictable and ever-changing threat. As President Trump and some of his allies and associates test positive for the coronavirus, the number of new cases reported each day across the United States has been slowly rising. The nation’s response has been uneven and inconsistent. Here is where the country is now.
The U.S. is at a key moment in the pandemic.
Spread of the virus could worsen significantly through the autumn, experts fear, as colder weather forces people indoors. Winter, paired with a new flu season, could make the precarious situation of today even worse. Every day, some 43,000 new cases are being reported — far fewer than were being identified during the surge in the summer, but still an uncomfortably large number.
From the hospital where Mr. Trump is being treated, he wrote on Twitter on Saturday, “Tremendous progress has been made over the last 6 months in fighting this PLAGUE.”
But the pace has been ticking upward slowly since the middle of September as the virus reached parts of the country that hadn’t been hit hard before. By this weekend, 7.3 million people in the United States — some of them at the highest reaches of the federal government — were known to have been infected. More than 208,000 people have died.
The Great Plains, spared early on, is struggling now.
Some of the country’s least populous states are now seeing its highest infection rates.
When coastal cities suffered in the spring, cases remained relatively scarce across most of the Northern Plains and rural West. But since late summer, North Dakota and South Dakota have added more cases per capita than any other state. Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have set troubling new records as well.
In North Dakota, state officials met with hospital executives recently to ensure there would be enough space in hospitals as cases surged around Bismarck, and health care workers said they were working overtime to meet the sudden rise. Leaders in Montana urged residents to take precautions as they warned of an uncertain new phase.
Wisconsin’s situation has become alarming.
Northeastern Wisconsin, a politically mixed region that also happens to be crucial to both parties’ hopes of winning the presidency, is facing one of the country’s most widespread, uncontrolled outbreaks right now.
By Saturday, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Three of the four American metro areas with the most recent cases per capita were in northeastern Wisconsin, with the Oshkosh area faring worst of all.
“I’m honestly not sure that anything we do right now will make a difference,” the mayor of Oshkosh, Lori Palmeri, said recently. “It’s too late.”
Across Wisconsin, warning signs mounted with few glimmers of progress. More than 3,000 new cases were announced in the state in a single day for the first time. The state set single-day records for deaths and hospitalizations. Its test positivity rate reached 20 percent, a loud signal that the outbreak in the state has spun of control.
Colleges are driving tens of thousands of new cases.
When college students returned to campuses for the fall, the coronavirus followed. University towns that had relatively few cases suddenly became hot spots. Clusters emerged in dorms, in fraternity and sorority houses, on sports teams. And in many places, in-person classes and parties and football games continued
Some of the worst trouble spots have calmed.
Misery in the Sun Belt has receded, helping to hold down the nation’s new case growth despite increases in the Midwest and West.
Summer outbreaks sent national case tallies soaring to more than 66,000 a day by late July. Arizona, California and Florida reported new records, then broke them, day after day. In some cities, officials shut down bars again and demanded that residents wear masks.
Florida is now averaging about 2,300 new cases a day, roughly one-fifth of what it was seeing at its worst. In Arizona, where overtaxed hospital capacity was once a concern, intensive care beds are now plentiful, and daily case reports have dropped to about 500 on average, down from more than 3,600. New infections have also plunged in California, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina. Mississippi, Texas and Alabama have made significant progress since midsummer as well, though case numbers there remain persistently high.
“Thankfully, we did not have a surge in Covid-19, as was predicted, after the Labor Day weekend,” Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, a Republican, said this week as she announced an extension of the state’s mask order. “But my friends, this isn’t just luck or coincidence. The fact is, our mask order that we imposed on July 16 is working, and the numbers speak for themselves.”
The question ahead is whether regions can hold on to their progress or whether new outbreaks will crop up quickly as limits are lifted and old hot spots surge again.
And the kicker - which I see as the actual intent on the part of people like Charles Koch:
America’s effort to stop the virus is a dizzying patchwork.
The nation’s effort to stop the coronavirus remains a constantly shifting amalgam of state and local rules. And that has meant starkly different realities from state to state, and from county to county.
The nation’s effort to stop the coronavirus remains a constantly shifting amalgam of state and local rules. And that has meant starkly different realities from state to state, and from county to county.
Oct 4, 2020
Today's Tweet
What the full flower of Unfettered Free Market Capitalism looks like.
Make no mistake...Trump and all of these Republicans will be getting convalescent plasma. Which is harvested from people who have the antibodies, and which almost nobody can afford.
— Richard Rowe for Congress (@ReforgeAmerica) October 4, 2020
Other words...Republicans now are LITERALLY living off the blood of the poor.#ElizabethBathory
COVID-19 Update
USA
An army of doctors - Access to an experimental drug - A special patient gets special care
There was no missing the message when a phalanx of white-coated doctors and nurses stood in the bright sunshine outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a briefing on President Trump’s health Saturday, and White House physician Sean P. Conley ticked off 13 names on the president’s medical team.
Trump’s caregivers are sparing nothing in their attempt to treat his coronavirus infection.
From his team of providers to his helicopter flight to the hospital to the experimental drug that fewer than 10 others have received outside a clinical trial, Trump has access to care available to few of the other 7.3 million people in the United States infected so far by the coronavirus. Even with symptoms that Conley appeared to describe as moderate at worst, the 74-year-old president is the VIP of VIPs in his battle against covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“I think about it as a realist,” said Robert Wachter, professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “He is the president of the United States. For him to get the most vigorous therapies . . . even if we have not yet reached the point where there is enough evidence to make it available to everyone in the country, doesn’t seem off to me.”
“I think access to treatment and frequent monitoring is probably a good thing for evolving medical care of a new disease,” added John W. Mellors, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
VIP treatment is a feature of American medicine. Major hospitals throughout the country have private spaces for celebrities, the super-rich and the influential, patients who want to be shielded from the public and just may make a large donation if they are happy with their care. They are U.S. citizens and foreign nationals from places including Saudi Arabia, China, Canada and Mexico.
The coronavirus pandemic, in contrast, has featured memorable scenes of community hospitals from New York to Texas nearly overwhelmed by desperately sick people, of doctors and nurses working around-the-clock with insufficient equipment. At least 208,000 people in the United States have died of covid-19, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Trump has been widely criticized for his handling of the pandemic, especially in the early months, when the federal government left states to scramble for face masks, ventilators and other equipment needed by caregivers and patients. That performance is his greatest weakness in next month’s election against his Democratic rival, former vice president Joe Biden, polls show.
In addition to his suite at the military hospital in Bethesda, Md., the most notable advantage Trump enjoys is access to an experimental antibody treatment that has been given to fewer than 10 people under the “compassionate use” program that the president’s doctors employed to obtain the drug from its manufacturer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. About 2,000 others have received the drug or a placebo because they are enrolled in the company’s clinical trial.
“The VIP treatment around antibodies is ethically troubling and yet there are many, many other things we do to support the president that are different from what you and I get, and we live with it every day,” Wachter said.
The drug has been touted as a potential game-changer by prominent scientists — a way to keep people from getting so sick that they must be hospitalized. The company announced recently that data showed the drug appeared to knock back the virus, reducing levels and relieving symptoms when given to people recently diagnosed with the coronavirus who weren’t in the hospital.
“Do we offer therapies to the president of the U.S. that we would not offer anyone else?” asked Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “I don’t know the doctors who made the decision, but it is hard for me to second- guess them. If he died, the security risk would be extraordinary, especially the way things are so revved up with conspiracy theories and everything else. It could have been very destabilizing.”
The special medical treatment often provided the powerful “reflects the inherent inequities in our health-care system,” said Jeanne Marrazzo, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “We know that VIPs get extraordinary care — our health-care system already distinguishes between people deemed worthy of the highest level of care, and that is the fact and the reality in our society.”
It is not clear exactly how many doctors, nurses and others are attending to Trump, but for hospitalized covid-19 patients in more serious condition than the president, staff ratios are critical. At times in the pandemic, ICU nurses who should have been caring for two people have found themselves attending to four.
“The vast majority of what we do in the ICU is supportive care,” said Russell G. Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. When it comes to monitoring patients, he said, having sufficient personnel is essential.
Buhr said he is concerned that unproven antibodies may not be the best course for Trump.
“More is not always better,” Buhr said. “I cannot say after caring for dozens and hundreds of patients that giving someone more is better than appropriately monitoring the situation and giving more treatment” when it’s required.
At least one survey has concluded that people receiving VIP care may demand unnecessary tests and treatments and receive them because of who they are.
Trump is receiving another drug, remdesivir, that is increasingly available to hospitalized covid-19 patients, but he may be getting it earlier than others do as his doctors try everything to halt the progress of the virus.
Conley said Friday that the president also is taking zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and a daily aspirin. Famotidine, which is used to reduce the production of stomach acid, is being studied as a possible therapy for covid-19. Melatonin can be employed as a sleep aid.
Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the aggressive care Trump is receiving reflects the circumstances his doctors find themselves in.
“I have every confidence in the quality of care he is receiving at Walter Reed. He’s in great hands,” Faust said. “But the decision-making process on treatments, I would say they represent the pressure cooker the president’s doctors are in.”
Conley, the White House physician, appeared to acknowledge as much at Saturday’s briefing. With Trump’s vital signs stable and no need for him to have supplemental oxygen on Saturday, why was Trump hospitalized at Walter Reed, a reporter asked.
“Because,” Conley said, “he’s the president of the United States.”
- New Cases: 48,925
- New Deaths: 755
President Stoopid is at Walter Reed getting the best healthcare in the world, while his Justice Dept sits on their hands, refusing to defend against a lawsuit aimed at taking healthcare away from 20-25 million Americans.
An army of doctors - Access to an experimental drug - A special patient gets special care
There was no missing the message when a phalanx of white-coated doctors and nurses stood in the bright sunshine outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a briefing on President Trump’s health Saturday, and White House physician Sean P. Conley ticked off 13 names on the president’s medical team.
Trump’s caregivers are sparing nothing in their attempt to treat his coronavirus infection.
From his team of providers to his helicopter flight to the hospital to the experimental drug that fewer than 10 others have received outside a clinical trial, Trump has access to care available to few of the other 7.3 million people in the United States infected so far by the coronavirus. Even with symptoms that Conley appeared to describe as moderate at worst, the 74-year-old president is the VIP of VIPs in his battle against covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“I think about it as a realist,” said Robert Wachter, professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “He is the president of the United States. For him to get the most vigorous therapies . . . even if we have not yet reached the point where there is enough evidence to make it available to everyone in the country, doesn’t seem off to me.”
“I think access to treatment and frequent monitoring is probably a good thing for evolving medical care of a new disease,” added John W. Mellors, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
VIP treatment is a feature of American medicine. Major hospitals throughout the country have private spaces for celebrities, the super-rich and the influential, patients who want to be shielded from the public and just may make a large donation if they are happy with their care. They are U.S. citizens and foreign nationals from places including Saudi Arabia, China, Canada and Mexico.
The coronavirus pandemic, in contrast, has featured memorable scenes of community hospitals from New York to Texas nearly overwhelmed by desperately sick people, of doctors and nurses working around-the-clock with insufficient equipment. At least 208,000 people in the United States have died of covid-19, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Trump has been widely criticized for his handling of the pandemic, especially in the early months, when the federal government left states to scramble for face masks, ventilators and other equipment needed by caregivers and patients. That performance is his greatest weakness in next month’s election against his Democratic rival, former vice president Joe Biden, polls show.
In addition to his suite at the military hospital in Bethesda, Md., the most notable advantage Trump enjoys is access to an experimental antibody treatment that has been given to fewer than 10 people under the “compassionate use” program that the president’s doctors employed to obtain the drug from its manufacturer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. About 2,000 others have received the drug or a placebo because they are enrolled in the company’s clinical trial.
“The VIP treatment around antibodies is ethically troubling and yet there are many, many other things we do to support the president that are different from what you and I get, and we live with it every day,” Wachter said.
The drug has been touted as a potential game-changer by prominent scientists — a way to keep people from getting so sick that they must be hospitalized. The company announced recently that data showed the drug appeared to knock back the virus, reducing levels and relieving symptoms when given to people recently diagnosed with the coronavirus who weren’t in the hospital.
“Do we offer therapies to the president of the U.S. that we would not offer anyone else?” asked Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “I don’t know the doctors who made the decision, but it is hard for me to second- guess them. If he died, the security risk would be extraordinary, especially the way things are so revved up with conspiracy theories and everything else. It could have been very destabilizing.”
The special medical treatment often provided the powerful “reflects the inherent inequities in our health-care system,” said Jeanne Marrazzo, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “We know that VIPs get extraordinary care — our health-care system already distinguishes between people deemed worthy of the highest level of care, and that is the fact and the reality in our society.”
It is not clear exactly how many doctors, nurses and others are attending to Trump, but for hospitalized covid-19 patients in more serious condition than the president, staff ratios are critical. At times in the pandemic, ICU nurses who should have been caring for two people have found themselves attending to four.
“The vast majority of what we do in the ICU is supportive care,” said Russell G. Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. When it comes to monitoring patients, he said, having sufficient personnel is essential.
Buhr said he is concerned that unproven antibodies may not be the best course for Trump.
“More is not always better,” Buhr said. “I cannot say after caring for dozens and hundreds of patients that giving someone more is better than appropriately monitoring the situation and giving more treatment” when it’s required.
At least one survey has concluded that people receiving VIP care may demand unnecessary tests and treatments and receive them because of who they are.
Trump is receiving another drug, remdesivir, that is increasingly available to hospitalized covid-19 patients, but he may be getting it earlier than others do as his doctors try everything to halt the progress of the virus.
Conley said Friday that the president also is taking zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and a daily aspirin. Famotidine, which is used to reduce the production of stomach acid, is being studied as a possible therapy for covid-19. Melatonin can be employed as a sleep aid.
Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the aggressive care Trump is receiving reflects the circumstances his doctors find themselves in.
“I have every confidence in the quality of care he is receiving at Walter Reed. He’s in great hands,” Faust said. “But the decision-making process on treatments, I would say they represent the pressure cooker the president’s doctors are in.”
Conley, the White House physician, appeared to acknowledge as much at Saturday’s briefing. With Trump’s vital signs stable and no need for him to have supplemental oxygen on Saturday, why was Trump hospitalized at Walter Reed, a reporter asked.
“Because,” Conley said, “he’s the president of the United States.”
There was another tell from the other day. Conley was asked why 45* was at Walter Reed, and he played it down (paraphrasing): "... just an over-abundance of caution." But when asked why Melania wasn't at Walter Reed: "Because she doesn't require hospitalization."
Now, there's always lots of weird speculation when something "healthcare-y" happens with a POTUS. And we can be clear that some of this current shit grows out of wishful thinking on the part of "the liberals" (maybe on the part of a very large majority of Americans and the world) because nothing would feel better to most of us than hearing 45* is suffering, and suffering badly, and painfully, and that he's scared because he's feeling helpless to do anything about the horribly shitty things that're happening to him etc etc etc.
But fun fantasies aside, there's a very high probability that 45* will come thru this in good shape and he'll be right back at it, and the rubes will hold him up as a shining example of super-macho awesomeness because "he beat the COVID" - and never mind that their hero overcame a dread disease that he's been telling them isn't that big a deal in the first place. None of that will bother them - shit, some Cult45 devotees believe the thing doesn't even exist.
And that won't matter either.
The memory hole will swallow everything that's gone before, and the new epic narrative will be established, with Trump starring as the guy who battled the monster and emerged victorious in defense of real Americans, and blah blah blah.
This is a very fucked up country right now - and that's not going to change a lot any time soon.
Oct 3, 2020
COVID-19 Update
Number of dead Americans projected at today's growth rate:
Invincibility punctured by infection: How the coronavirus spread in Trump’s White House
The ceremony in the White House Rose Garden last Saturday was a triumphal flashback to the Before Times — before public health guidelines restricted mass gatherings, before people were urged to wear masks and socially distance.
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed more than 150 guests as the president formally introduced Judge Amy Coney Barrett, his nominee for the Supreme Court. A handful of Republican senators were there, including Mike Lee of Utah, who hugged and mingled with guests. So was Kellyanne Conway, the recently departed senior counselor to the president, as well as the Rev. John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, who left his Indiana campus where a coronavirus outbreak had recently occurred to celebrate an alumna’s nomination.
Spirits were high. Finally, Trump was steering the national discussion away from the coronavirus pandemic — which had already killed more than 200,000 people in the United States and was still raging — to more favorable terrain, a possible conservative realignment of the Supreme Court.
Attendees were so confident that the contagion would not invade their seemingly safe space at the White House that, according to Jenkins, after guests tested negative that day they were instructed they no longer needed to cover their faces. The no-mask mantra applied indoors as well. Cabinet members, senators, Barrett family members and others mixed unencumbered at tightly packed, indoor receptions in the White House’s Diplomatic Room and Cabinet Room.
Five days later, that feeling of invincibility was cruelly punctured. On Thursday, counselor to the president Hope Hicks, who reported feeling symptoms during a trip with the president to Minnesota on Wednesday, tested positive for the virus. Early Friday morning, Trump announced that he and the first lady also had tested positive and had begun isolating inside the White House residence.
On Friday, Lee, Conway and Jenkins announced that they, too, had tested positive, as did Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who was at the ceremony, and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who had recently spent time with the president, including at an indoor fundraiser last week. At least three journalists who had been at White House events in the past week also reported testing positive on Friday. And White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said he was bracing for additional infections among administration officials.
By Friday afternoon, Trump’s condition had worsened, officials said, though they maintained he was “in good spirits.” The president had a low-grade fever, a cough and nasal congestion, among other symptoms, according to two people familiar with his condition who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss a sensitive matter.
Trump was transported about 6:16 p.m. Friday to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for further treatment out of what the White House described as an abundance of caution.
As Trump’s condition deteriorated during the day Friday, the president and his team ultimately made the decision to send him to Walter Reed preemptively — and, from a public relations perspective, when he was still able to walk to Marine One on his own, according to one outside adviser in frequent contact with White House officials. They feared the possibility of a further decline, and what that might mean, both for the president’s health and his political optics.
The White House outbreak thrust Washington into a state of heightened alarm Friday, with uncertainty one month before the election about the health of the president, whose age of 74, as well as additional co-morbidities — obesity, high cholesterol and slightly elevated blood pressure — increase his risks of a negative outcome.
Though White House officials have begun contact tracing to try to identify the origin of the outbreak, it is not publicly known whether the Rose Garden announcement of Barrett’s nomination was a superspreader event.
Still, the jarring contrast between the carefree, cavalier attitude toward the virus on display in the Rose Garden last Saturday and the pernicious awakening that occurred Thursday night resembles a Shakespearean tragedy.
The White House’s handling of the period between the first known symptoms — those of Hicks on Wednesday — and the president’s infection, which was confirmed about 1 a.m. Friday, is what experts considered a case study in irresponsibility and mismanagement.
Administration officials at first were not transparent with the public, and have not been forthcoming with detailed information about Trump’s condition since. Meadows told reporters Friday morning only that Trump was experiencing “mild symptoms” and would not elaborate on what those symptoms were.
“I’m not going to get into any particular treatment that he may or may not have,” Meadows said.
On Friday afternoon, the White House distributed a memorandum by White House physician Sean Conley describing Trump as “fatigued but in good spirits.” Though Conley listed the drugs he had administered, he provided to the public no measurements of the president’s condition, nor did he nor any other knowledgeable source submit to questions from journalists.
'Losing their minds'
Inside the West Wing’s narrow corridors, where staffers for months have worked in proximity largely without masks, what had long been an atmosphere of invincibility turned into one of apprehension and panic. “People are losing their minds,” said the outside adviser.
First, aides fretted about their own risks of exposure. If the president got infected, so might they.
Then they considered the political implications, coming so close to the Nov. 3 election. “We don’t want to be talking about coronavirus and now we’re talking about coronavirus,” the outside adviser said. “The hit writes itself: He can’t protect the country. He couldn’t even protect himself.”
Then they considered the reality that the president could actually get very sick. Trump was unusually quiet Friday, not appearing before cameras nor even calling into Fox News Channel by phone, as he does from time to time.
Vice President Pence, whose doctor said he tested negative for the virus Friday morning, worked from his residence at the Naval Observatory for the day. But other White House officials did not take the same precautions.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law who both are senior advisers and have interacted with Trump and Hicks this week, tested negative on Friday, said White House spokeswoman Carolina Hurley. But she declined to answer questions about whether the two planned to self-isolate, and Kushner was seen at work in the White House on Friday.
Meadows, who also has had regular interaction with Trump and Hicks, did not wear a mask when he briefed reporters outdoors on Friday morning. Asked why, the chief of staff responded defensively, “I’ve obviously been tested. We’re hopefully more than six feet away.”
It was unclear where or how Trump contracted the virus, but his travel schedule has been robust all week. He visited five states between Sunday and Monday and interacted with hundreds of individuals.
- Election Day: 240,167
- Year's End: 300,398
Yesterday's numbers for USAmerica Inc:
- New Cases: 51,403
- New Deaths: 864
It seems weird - even for Washington DC - that there could've been any kind of thinking that they were all somehow bulletproof, but I guess the level of denial is worse than we thought. And added to the intoxication of wielding the power of the American government, it can get pretty fuckin' bad.
Driftglass's analogy to The Masque Of The Red Death becomes all too prophetic.
Invincibility punctured by infection: How the coronavirus spread in Trump’s White House
The ceremony in the White House Rose Garden last Saturday was a triumphal flashback to the Before Times — before public health guidelines restricted mass gatherings, before people were urged to wear masks and socially distance.
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed more than 150 guests as the president formally introduced Judge Amy Coney Barrett, his nominee for the Supreme Court. A handful of Republican senators were there, including Mike Lee of Utah, who hugged and mingled with guests. So was Kellyanne Conway, the recently departed senior counselor to the president, as well as the Rev. John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, who left his Indiana campus where a coronavirus outbreak had recently occurred to celebrate an alumna’s nomination.
Spirits were high. Finally, Trump was steering the national discussion away from the coronavirus pandemic — which had already killed more than 200,000 people in the United States and was still raging — to more favorable terrain, a possible conservative realignment of the Supreme Court.
Attendees were so confident that the contagion would not invade their seemingly safe space at the White House that, according to Jenkins, after guests tested negative that day they were instructed they no longer needed to cover their faces. The no-mask mantra applied indoors as well. Cabinet members, senators, Barrett family members and others mixed unencumbered at tightly packed, indoor receptions in the White House’s Diplomatic Room and Cabinet Room.
Five days later, that feeling of invincibility was cruelly punctured. On Thursday, counselor to the president Hope Hicks, who reported feeling symptoms during a trip with the president to Minnesota on Wednesday, tested positive for the virus. Early Friday morning, Trump announced that he and the first lady also had tested positive and had begun isolating inside the White House residence.
On Friday, Lee, Conway and Jenkins announced that they, too, had tested positive, as did Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who was at the ceremony, and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who had recently spent time with the president, including at an indoor fundraiser last week. At least three journalists who had been at White House events in the past week also reported testing positive on Friday. And White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said he was bracing for additional infections among administration officials.
By Friday afternoon, Trump’s condition had worsened, officials said, though they maintained he was “in good spirits.” The president had a low-grade fever, a cough and nasal congestion, among other symptoms, according to two people familiar with his condition who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss a sensitive matter.
Trump was transported about 6:16 p.m. Friday to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for further treatment out of what the White House described as an abundance of caution.
As Trump’s condition deteriorated during the day Friday, the president and his team ultimately made the decision to send him to Walter Reed preemptively — and, from a public relations perspective, when he was still able to walk to Marine One on his own, according to one outside adviser in frequent contact with White House officials. They feared the possibility of a further decline, and what that might mean, both for the president’s health and his political optics.
The White House outbreak thrust Washington into a state of heightened alarm Friday, with uncertainty one month before the election about the health of the president, whose age of 74, as well as additional co-morbidities — obesity, high cholesterol and slightly elevated blood pressure — increase his risks of a negative outcome.
Though White House officials have begun contact tracing to try to identify the origin of the outbreak, it is not publicly known whether the Rose Garden announcement of Barrett’s nomination was a superspreader event.
Still, the jarring contrast between the carefree, cavalier attitude toward the virus on display in the Rose Garden last Saturday and the pernicious awakening that occurred Thursday night resembles a Shakespearean tragedy.
The White House’s handling of the period between the first known symptoms — those of Hicks on Wednesday — and the president’s infection, which was confirmed about 1 a.m. Friday, is what experts considered a case study in irresponsibility and mismanagement.
Administration officials at first were not transparent with the public, and have not been forthcoming with detailed information about Trump’s condition since. Meadows told reporters Friday morning only that Trump was experiencing “mild symptoms” and would not elaborate on what those symptoms were.
“I’m not going to get into any particular treatment that he may or may not have,” Meadows said.
On Friday afternoon, the White House distributed a memorandum by White House physician Sean Conley describing Trump as “fatigued but in good spirits.” Though Conley listed the drugs he had administered, he provided to the public no measurements of the president’s condition, nor did he nor any other knowledgeable source submit to questions from journalists.
'Losing their minds'
Inside the West Wing’s narrow corridors, where staffers for months have worked in proximity largely without masks, what had long been an atmosphere of invincibility turned into one of apprehension and panic. “People are losing their minds,” said the outside adviser.
First, aides fretted about their own risks of exposure. If the president got infected, so might they.
Then they considered the political implications, coming so close to the Nov. 3 election. “We don’t want to be talking about coronavirus and now we’re talking about coronavirus,” the outside adviser said. “The hit writes itself: He can’t protect the country. He couldn’t even protect himself.”
Then they considered the reality that the president could actually get very sick. Trump was unusually quiet Friday, not appearing before cameras nor even calling into Fox News Channel by phone, as he does from time to time.
Vice President Pence, whose doctor said he tested negative for the virus Friday morning, worked from his residence at the Naval Observatory for the day. But other White House officials did not take the same precautions.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law who both are senior advisers and have interacted with Trump and Hicks this week, tested negative on Friday, said White House spokeswoman Carolina Hurley. But she declined to answer questions about whether the two planned to self-isolate, and Kushner was seen at work in the White House on Friday.
Meadows, who also has had regular interaction with Trump and Hicks, did not wear a mask when he briefed reporters outdoors on Friday morning. Asked why, the chief of staff responded defensively, “I’ve obviously been tested. We’re hopefully more than six feet away.”
It was unclear where or how Trump contracted the virus, but his travel schedule has been robust all week. He visited five states between Sunday and Monday and interacted with hundreds of individuals.
They don't know how any of this happened!?! They haven't followed the guidelines, and so they can't figure out the tracing necessary to keep people as safe as it's possible to keep them. This is the fucking PRESIDENT we're talking about, and these assholes were so caught up in the politics they chose to become deaf dumb and blind. What the actual fuck, people.
The first sign of symptoms inside the presidential bubble came on Trump’s trip Wednesday to Minnesota, where he attended a campaign fundraiser in Shorewood and an evening rally in Duluth.
Hicks, who spends more time with the president than most staffers, tested negative for the coronavirus on Wednesday morning, but started to feel ill during the Minnesota trip. She self-isolated aboard Air Force One for the flight home that night, although some other aides on the trip were unaware she had done so. Hicks took another test Thursday morning, and the results came back positive.
Meanwhile, Trump’s voice sounded raspy at times during his rally performance in Duluth, and he delivered a shorter speech than is typical, clocking in at 46 minutes compared to other recent rally speeches that have stretched well past an hour.
On Thursday, Hicks’s diagnosis was kept secret from the public and even from some of her own colleagues. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not know Hicks had the virus when she briefed reporters about 11 a.m., but learned midafternoon, as the president was preparing to depart for another campaign fundraiser, this one at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Trump’s age, immune system and underlying health problems will chart his battle against covid-19
By then, word about Hicks’s condition had begun spreading among Trump aides. Some staffers suddenly started wearing masks, a sign that something was amiss. A few senior aides were pulled from the Bedminster trip, including McEnany, who had been around Hicks extensively that week and was replaced by one of her deputies, Judd Deere.
Other aides on the trip were Johnny McEntee, Tony Ornato and Brian Jack. None wore a mask on Air Force One, but they did aboard Marine One, considering the helicopter has far tighter quarters than the airplane.
“Trump thought he could go to the fundraiser and keep it secret that Hicks had it,” Republican donor Dan Eberhart said.
Trump’s decision to proceed with the fundraiser after the known infection of Hicks, someone with whom he had extended recent close contact, went against the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities.
“They knew she was positive and they still let Marine One take off with the president. Why didn’t they ground him? That was the break in protocol,” said Kavita Patel, a practicing physician and former health adviser in the Obama White House. “The CDC’s protocol clearly states that as soon as anybody, i.e. Hope Hicks, was confirmed positive, anybody she came into close contact with for at least 48 hours prior should have at least isolated.”
In Bedminster, Trump held a roundtable fundraiser indoors where donors were sitting around the table with him. Masks were not worn in the room. The president then went outdoors to address a larger group, and some of those attendees wore masks, people present said.
Many of the attendees were elderly, a mix of real estate figures and Trump friends, including Keith Frankel, a vitamins executive who had worked with Trump on hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug Trump had falsely touted as a coronavirus cure.
“It was mostly the same stuff you hear him say on TV,” Frankel said of the president’s remarks, describing them in an interview late Thursday before Trump had tested positive.
En route back to the White House, Trump acknowledged Hicks’s diagnosis to his traveling team and said he was going to be tested, people with knowledge of his comments said.
News of Hicks’s infection came late in the evening — not in a public release by the White House, but rather from a Bloomberg News report, which White House officials quickly confirmed. About 10 p.m., Trump called into his friend Sean Hannity’s show on Fox for a pre-scheduled interview, where the host asked him about Hicks contracting the virus. Trump said he had taken a test and was awaiting his results.
“You know, it’s very hard,” the president said, his voice again sounding raspy. “When you’re with soldiers, when you’re with airmen, when you’re with Marines, and I’m with — and the police officers. I’m with them so much. And when they come over here, it’s very hard to say, ‘Stay back, stay back.’ It’s a tough kind of a situation. It’s a terrible thing. So, I just went for a test, and we will see what happens. I mean, who knows?”
In another breach of standard protocol for controlling the spread of the virus, not everyone who had come into contact with the president was immediately notified by the White House’s contact tracers. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who had been helping Trump with debate preparation earlier this week, said Friday afternoon that he had not been contacted. In addition, at least one journalist who tested positive after traveling with the president this week also had not heard from the White House as of Friday afternoon.
'No one was distanced'
As White House officials worked to trace the origin of the outbreak, they became concerned about a series of events Saturday: Barrett’s Rose Garden announcement and the private indoor receptions surrounding it.
A feeling of invincibility from the virus was pervasive. Guests were administered rapid coronavirus tests upon arrival and waited in a room wearing masks, according to Jenkins, the Notre Dame president. Then, he wrote in a statement Friday, “we were notified that we had all tested negative and were told that it was safe to remove our masks.”
Once escorted outside, guests mingled in the Rose Garden shaking hands and hugging, then took seats positioned closely together. Jenkins said he regretted “my mistake” of not wearing a mask and shaking hands at the event.
The mixing continued at indoor receptions to celebrate Barrett, which two White House officials said Friday have caused deep concern within the president’s circle. They were attended by Cabinet members, senators, Barrett’s family, family members of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and other guests, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“They were all mingling without masks and in close quarters,” one of the officials said. “No one was distanced.”
Rochelle Walensky, chief of the division of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said a negative test is hardly a guarantee of immunity.
Who’s positive, who’s negative: The latest coronavirus test results for Trump’s advisers and allies
“People believe that if their test is negative, then they should be fine and the truth is that means you’re fine today,” Walensky said. “It doesn’t even mean you’re fine tonight, as the Thursday testing demonstrated.”
On the Friday night before the Barrett announcement, Trump attended an indoor fundraiser at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, along with McDaniel, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, lobbyist Brian Ballard and a coterie of Trump aides and allies.
McDaniel, who then spent two days with the president before beginning to show symptoms earlier this week, tested positive for the virus on Wednesday. She told the president about her infection on Friday morning, although she had notified some White House officials before then, according to two people familiar with the situation. She attempted to reach Trump sooner but did not get through to him and spoke instead with a White House doctor.
Trump’s non-socially distanced interactions continued throughout the week. After the Barrett announcement, Trump traveled to Middletown, Pa., to hold an evening campaign rally. On Sunday, he played golf at his private club in Northern Virginia, held a news conference at the White House and hosted a reception for Gold Star parents. On Monday, Trump spoke in the Rose Garden to update the nation on the coronavirus.
All the while, Trump held debate preparation meetings with Christie, Hicks, Conway, personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and a handful of other advisers. Neither Trump nor Hicks showed symptoms or wore a mask, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.
“He was totally like himself,” Conway said.
Trump traveled Tuesday afternoon to Cleveland for his first debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The candidates’ podiums stood 12 feet 8 inches apart, roughly double the recommended social distancing space of six feet, according to Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., co-chair of the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
Fahrenkopf said the commission adopted changes to the routine because of the pandemic, including killing the typical meet-and-greet backstage. Everybody in the debate hall — other than Trump, Biden and moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News — was required to test negative for the virus and to wear a mask.
“The first family came in wearing masks, but they took them off,” Fahrenkopf said. “The rules said you had to wear a mask.”
Trump’s schedule continued apace Wednesday and Thursday. When he spoke about the virus in the Rose Garden on Monday afternoon, the president all but declared victory over the virus.
“Tremendous progress is being made,” he said. “I say, and I’ll say it all the time: We’re rounding the corner. And, very importantly, vaccines are coming, but we’re rounding the corner regardless.”
He could not have known then what was yet to come.
The first sign of symptoms inside the presidential bubble came on Trump’s trip Wednesday to Minnesota, where he attended a campaign fundraiser in Shorewood and an evening rally in Duluth.
Hicks, who spends more time with the president than most staffers, tested negative for the coronavirus on Wednesday morning, but started to feel ill during the Minnesota trip. She self-isolated aboard Air Force One for the flight home that night, although some other aides on the trip were unaware she had done so. Hicks took another test Thursday morning, and the results came back positive.
Meanwhile, Trump’s voice sounded raspy at times during his rally performance in Duluth, and he delivered a shorter speech than is typical, clocking in at 46 minutes compared to other recent rally speeches that have stretched well past an hour.
On Thursday, Hicks’s diagnosis was kept secret from the public and even from some of her own colleagues. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not know Hicks had the virus when she briefed reporters about 11 a.m., but learned midafternoon, as the president was preparing to depart for another campaign fundraiser, this one at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Trump’s age, immune system and underlying health problems will chart his battle against covid-19
By then, word about Hicks’s condition had begun spreading among Trump aides. Some staffers suddenly started wearing masks, a sign that something was amiss. A few senior aides were pulled from the Bedminster trip, including McEnany, who had been around Hicks extensively that week and was replaced by one of her deputies, Judd Deere.
Other aides on the trip were Johnny McEntee, Tony Ornato and Brian Jack. None wore a mask on Air Force One, but they did aboard Marine One, considering the helicopter has far tighter quarters than the airplane.
“Trump thought he could go to the fundraiser and keep it secret that Hicks had it,” Republican donor Dan Eberhart said.
Trump’s decision to proceed with the fundraiser after the known infection of Hicks, someone with whom he had extended recent close contact, went against the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities.
“They knew she was positive and they still let Marine One take off with the president. Why didn’t they ground him? That was the break in protocol,” said Kavita Patel, a practicing physician and former health adviser in the Obama White House. “The CDC’s protocol clearly states that as soon as anybody, i.e. Hope Hicks, was confirmed positive, anybody she came into close contact with for at least 48 hours prior should have at least isolated.”
In Bedminster, Trump held a roundtable fundraiser indoors where donors were sitting around the table with him. Masks were not worn in the room. The president then went outdoors to address a larger group, and some of those attendees wore masks, people present said.
Many of the attendees were elderly, a mix of real estate figures and Trump friends, including Keith Frankel, a vitamins executive who had worked with Trump on hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug Trump had falsely touted as a coronavirus cure.
“It was mostly the same stuff you hear him say on TV,” Frankel said of the president’s remarks, describing them in an interview late Thursday before Trump had tested positive.
En route back to the White House, Trump acknowledged Hicks’s diagnosis to his traveling team and said he was going to be tested, people with knowledge of his comments said.
News of Hicks’s infection came late in the evening — not in a public release by the White House, but rather from a Bloomberg News report, which White House officials quickly confirmed. About 10 p.m., Trump called into his friend Sean Hannity’s show on Fox for a pre-scheduled interview, where the host asked him about Hicks contracting the virus. Trump said he had taken a test and was awaiting his results.
“You know, it’s very hard,” the president said, his voice again sounding raspy. “When you’re with soldiers, when you’re with airmen, when you’re with Marines, and I’m with — and the police officers. I’m with them so much. And when they come over here, it’s very hard to say, ‘Stay back, stay back.’ It’s a tough kind of a situation. It’s a terrible thing. So, I just went for a test, and we will see what happens. I mean, who knows?”
In another breach of standard protocol for controlling the spread of the virus, not everyone who had come into contact with the president was immediately notified by the White House’s contact tracers. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who had been helping Trump with debate preparation earlier this week, said Friday afternoon that he had not been contacted. In addition, at least one journalist who tested positive after traveling with the president this week also had not heard from the White House as of Friday afternoon.
'No one was distanced'
As White House officials worked to trace the origin of the outbreak, they became concerned about a series of events Saturday: Barrett’s Rose Garden announcement and the private indoor receptions surrounding it.
A feeling of invincibility from the virus was pervasive. Guests were administered rapid coronavirus tests upon arrival and waited in a room wearing masks, according to Jenkins, the Notre Dame president. Then, he wrote in a statement Friday, “we were notified that we had all tested negative and were told that it was safe to remove our masks.”
Once escorted outside, guests mingled in the Rose Garden shaking hands and hugging, then took seats positioned closely together. Jenkins said he regretted “my mistake” of not wearing a mask and shaking hands at the event.
The mixing continued at indoor receptions to celebrate Barrett, which two White House officials said Friday have caused deep concern within the president’s circle. They were attended by Cabinet members, senators, Barrett’s family, family members of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and other guests, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“They were all mingling without masks and in close quarters,” one of the officials said. “No one was distanced.”
Rochelle Walensky, chief of the division of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said a negative test is hardly a guarantee of immunity.
Who’s positive, who’s negative: The latest coronavirus test results for Trump’s advisers and allies
“People believe that if their test is negative, then they should be fine and the truth is that means you’re fine today,” Walensky said. “It doesn’t even mean you’re fine tonight, as the Thursday testing demonstrated.”
On the Friday night before the Barrett announcement, Trump attended an indoor fundraiser at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, along with McDaniel, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, lobbyist Brian Ballard and a coterie of Trump aides and allies.
McDaniel, who then spent two days with the president before beginning to show symptoms earlier this week, tested positive for the virus on Wednesday. She told the president about her infection on Friday morning, although she had notified some White House officials before then, according to two people familiar with the situation. She attempted to reach Trump sooner but did not get through to him and spoke instead with a White House doctor.
Trump’s non-socially distanced interactions continued throughout the week. After the Barrett announcement, Trump traveled to Middletown, Pa., to hold an evening campaign rally. On Sunday, he played golf at his private club in Northern Virginia, held a news conference at the White House and hosted a reception for Gold Star parents. On Monday, Trump spoke in the Rose Garden to update the nation on the coronavirus.
All the while, Trump held debate preparation meetings with Christie, Hicks, Conway, personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and a handful of other advisers. Neither Trump nor Hicks showed symptoms or wore a mask, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.
“He was totally like himself,” Conway said.
Trump traveled Tuesday afternoon to Cleveland for his first debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The candidates’ podiums stood 12 feet 8 inches apart, roughly double the recommended social distancing space of six feet, according to Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., co-chair of the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
Fahrenkopf said the commission adopted changes to the routine because of the pandemic, including killing the typical meet-and-greet backstage. Everybody in the debate hall — other than Trump, Biden and moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News — was required to test negative for the virus and to wear a mask.
“The first family came in wearing masks, but they took them off,” Fahrenkopf said. “The rules said you had to wear a mask.”
Trump’s schedule continued apace Wednesday and Thursday. When he spoke about the virus in the Rose Garden on Monday afternoon, the president all but declared victory over the virus.
“Tremendous progress is being made,” he said. “I say, and I’ll say it all the time: We’re rounding the corner. And, very importantly, vaccines are coming, but we’re rounding the corner regardless.”
He could not have known then what was yet to come.
Oct 2, 2020
Animal Friends
I'm not much of a dog guy - not because I don't like dogs. Dogs are OK. Dogs can be amazingly special critters - just like people can be sometimes. Same with cats and any other animal friend.
Here's a tweet:
It's just that for me, pets are kinda high maintenance, no matter how low-maintenance they actually are.
So I don't subscribe to any kind of thinking that makes having a dog a requirement for the presidency.
That said, there's something a little creepy about a guy who's never had a dog or a cat or a fucking goldfish for that matter.
Keith Olbermann:
I really miss that guy.
The perfect ad doesn’t ex— pic.twitter.com/zngLM0JEgV
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 2, 2020
Today's Pix
(Google recently moved everything to a new version of blogger, and among the many glitches is the slide show feature seems not to be working - sorry about that)
click
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