Handling the coronavirus crisis

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President Donald Trump was not tested for coronavirus before entering the facility where he spent approximately two hours, including the 90-minute debate with former vice president Joe Biden. Fox News anchors Bill Hemmer and Chris Wallace revealed an extraordinary breakdown in security, potentially putting Joe Biden and everyone else at risk. "The clinic had a rule you wear a mask inside," Hemmer explained, according to a trranscript posted by The Daily Beast's Andrew Kirell. "That was stated clearly. If you look at the statement today, I'll read a key line: 'Individuals traveling with both candidates including the candidates themselves had been tested and tested negative by their respective campaigns.' They weren't tested by the Clinic based on the statement, Chris, and to me that sounds like an honor system." "Well, they couldn't be tested by the Clinic," Wallace replied, referring to the Cleveland Clinic, which hosted the debate. "You were tested. I was tested," said Hemmer. "I understand that, Bill, but the difference was I arrived on Sunday, you arrived on Monday. They didn't arrive until Tuesday afternoon. So for them to get tested, there wouldn't have been enough time to have the test, and have the debate at nine o'clock that night," Wallace continued.  Inside the debate hall all attendees except participants were required to wear masks throughout the debate. Everyone on the Biden side did, almost everyone on the Trump side did not. The Cleveland Clinic reportedly asked but the Trump camp ignored the requests.

Trump arrived too late to be tested before debate -- so host relied on 'honor system': report - Alternet.org

• Trump and his people were not tested before the Presidential debate because they arrived late
  
• Despite protocol, Trump's people didn't wear a mask, not even when they were asked
  
• Trump campaign didn't even inform the Biden campaign of his positive test.
  

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President Trump hid results of his first positive COVID-19 test on Thursday while awaiting the results of a second test that would later also come back positive, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. People familiar with the president's health troubles told the newspaper that a rapid COVID-19 test returned a positive result before President Trump called in to Fox News for an interview with Sean Hannity Thursday evening. During the interview, Trump addressed the diagnosis of his aide, Hope Hicks, with coronavirus but did not reveal that he himself had apparently already tested positive.

The Journal also reported that Trump told at least one aide to keep the result of their own positive test results secret. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Journal or The Hill.

Trump sought to keep COVID-19 diagnosis secret Thursday as he awaited second test result: WSJ | TheHill

An attending physician at Walter Reed Medical Center swiped at President Trump for leaving his hospital room and waving to supporters gathered outside from his motorcade, saying it puts those in the vehicle at risk. "That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play," Dr. James P. Phillips, who is also the Chief of Disaster Medicine at George Washington University Emergency Medicine.

Walter Reed attending physician swipes at Trump for motorcade visit to supporters | TheHill

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A top Trump health official met Monday with a group of doctors who are proponents of the controversial “herd immunity” approach to COVID-19, even as other experts warn of its deadly and dangerous consequences. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard; Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford; and Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford, all of whom are epidemiologists studying infectious diseases, were invited to the meeting by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Scott Atlas, an adviser to Trump on whom other experts have cast doubt for his statements about COVID-19, including his endorsement of herd immunity.

Trump health official meets with doctors pushing herd immunity | TheHill

White House physician Sean Conley on Monday ducked repeated questions from reporters about President Trump's health and the timeline of his COVID-19 infection, even as he insisted the president is well enough to leave the hospital and return to the White House.

Trump's physician declines to provide key information on his health | TheHill

• McEnany tests positive for COVID-19 | TheHill
  
• Pastor who attended White House event has COVID-19 | TheHill
  
• Trump leaves Walter Reed, saying Americans shouldn't be 'afraid' of COVID-19 | TheHill
  
• Poll: 74 percent of voters want Senate to take on COVID-19 relief before SCOTUS nominee | TheHill
  
• Trump was given dexamethasone, a steroid used for severely ill Covid-19 patients - Vox
  

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New Jersey governor Phil Murphy said Trump should have canceled a big-dollar fundraiser at a golf club in his state after a top aide tested positive for the coronavirus, rather than risk contagion among the hundreds of attendees and staff at the event. “This borders on reckless in terms of exposing people not just in New Jersey, but looks like from folks around the country, who have now scattered by the way,” he told CNN. Authorities are working to contact trace for the more than 200 people who may have been exposed at the fundraiser Trump held last week, hours before the White House said the president received his own positive diagnosis. But Murphy called on the federal government to assist with contact tracing, particularly given that a number of guests traveled to the event from out of town. “We’re taking the lead. We got on it immediately, both at the state level and the local level. But, you know, we need cooperation from the feds,” he said in the interview. “Remember, the staff all live in New Jersey even though the attendees were from around the country.” He also urged all attendees to self-quarantine. “Please, god, if you know you’re exposed to someone who is Covid-positive, you need to quarantine,” he said. “I don’t want to be the grinch here but that’s the way we have got to deal with this virus.”

(1) Donald Trump condemned for Covid stunt 'insanity' as US approaches 7.5m cases – US politics live | US news | The Guardian

Donald Trump said in March he “didn’t have a lot of time” to meet the top public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci for a briefing about the coronavirus outbreak that was then gathering pace, according to a new recording released by the reporter Bob Woodward. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly has a nice summary on the latest tape to be released by the veteran journalist, whose interviews with Trump revealed that the president was aware of the dangers of the virus in February even as he downplayed its seriousness publicly.

(1) Donald Trump condemned for Covid stunt 'insanity' as US approaches 7.5m cases – US politics live | US news | The Guardian

Yet the optimistic report on the president’s prognosis also came with an admission by his physician, Sean Conley, that Trump had needed supplemental oxygen on Friday and that his blood oxygen saturation had dropped to worrisome levels twice in the past three days. Conley said he’d withheld details about this at Saturday’s press briefing because he wanted to “reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president” has had about the course of Trump’s illness. 

The president’s medical team also reported that Trump on Saturday started yet another drug to fight Covid-19: dexamethasone. The steroid has been shown in clinical trials to improve outcomes — but is only recommended for patients with severe or critical Covid-19. It’s also the third Covid-19 drug to be administered to the president, following an experimental monoclonal antibody treatment given Friday and an ongoing, five-day course of the antiviral remdesivir. But dexamethasone can also have serious psychiatric side effects, and the decision to use it so early in the president’s infection sparked a new round of speculation about the severity of his illness..

Trump was given dexamethasone, a steroid used for severely ill Covid-19 patients - Vox

[Admin]

And the President was in good form:

• Car trip for his supporters exposing the security people as the car is sealed for chemical attacks.
  
• Tweeting that people should not be afraid of Covid
  
• Going back to the White House while on steroids, a drug normally given to people with severe Covid
  
• Exposing people in the White House, where infections are already running high
  

And read the following article, it's even worse than you think:

The president apparently took no measures to protect his political advisers, aides, and donors, and largely left them in the dark once he had tested positive.

Trump Is Recklessly Callous Even With His Close Aides - The Atlantic

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Enter Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who decided to spend Monday night coughing through an interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox News, announcing that the science on Covid is in fact baloney, and with it the science on mask-wearing, too. That Giuliani is anti-mask is not surprising. He did, after all, spend the last week indoors with the president, sans mask, as he helped Trump prep for the presidential debates. But you’d think Giuliani might soften his stance on masks, considering that since he and Chris Christie were trapped in a room with the president , that Christie has since tested positive for the virus, and that he and the president were both hospitalized. Giuliani has, at least, taken heed and gotten a test – he confirmed on MacCallum’s show that he is awaiting the results of a second coronavirus test.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani coughs his way through anti-mask interview | US news | The Guardian

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Researchers in Chicago found that more than 80 percent of sampled coronavirus patients had some form of neurologic impact, including muscle pain, headaches and encephalopathy.

Most COVID-19 patients who are hospitalized develop neurological symptoms, new study finds | TheHill

One of the nation’s most prominent epidemiologists with a history of serving under multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican, reportedly sent an emotional letter to the current director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, advising him to “face the truth” regarding the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter, obtained by USA Today, is dated Sept. 23, and was authored by William Foege, an epidemiologist who played a critical role in the eradication of smallpox in the 1970s, and currently serving as a professor at Emory University.

Beginning the letter by acknowledging the “terrible burden” Redfield bears, Foege blames the Trump administration’s lack of delegating the pandemic into the hands of qualified scientists as a key reason the outbreak has been so severe. “The failure of the White House to put the CDC in charge has resulted in the violation of every lesson learned in the last 75 years that made CDC the gold standard for public health in the world,” he wrote. “Despite the White House spin attempts, this will go down as a colossal failure of the public health system of this country.”  He went on to say future texts on the COVID-19 pandemic will serve as a lesson in how not to handle a pandemic.

Renowned infectious disease expert tells CDC director to admit US pandemic effort has resulted in 'slaughter' | TheHill

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The White House coronavirus outbreak has infected 34 “staffers and other contacts” according to a leaked government memo. The memo was distributed on Wednesday among senior leadership at FEMA, an agency within the Department of Homeland security, according to ABC News. It was previously reported that a total of 24 White House aides and their contacts had tested positive for the virus. The memo also states that a senior adviser to the president is positive for coronavirus. Both Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller, who are senior advisers to the president, have recently contracted the virus..

Leaked memo says more infected in White House coronavirus outbreak | The Independent

• Now combine this with the following:
  

White House officials and the president's physician have refused to disclose when President Trump last tested negative for COVID-19, a key detail that has implications for how long the president could be infectious and who else he might have exposed to the highly contagious virus.

Here's why it matters when Trump last tested negative for COVID-19 | TheHill

• The CDC has offered assistance in contract tracing (they are world class in that), but the White House refused...
  
• And this stuff has serious consequences:
  

A White House security official is reportedly “gravely ill” after contracting COVID-19 in September, Bloomberg reports...  Bailey grew sick before the Rose Garden event held on Sept. 26, in which President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Since that event, more than 10 attendees — including the president, first lady Melania Trump and adviser Kellyanne Conway — have tested positive for the disease. However, the White House is not contact tracing attendees of the event, according to a report from The New York Times, which cited an unnamed White House official for its coverage earlier this week.

White House security official reported to be gravely ill with COVID-19 | TheHill

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In an unprecedented move, the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday published an editorial written by its editors condemning the Trump administration for its response to the Covid-19 pandemic -- and calling for the current leadership in the United States to be voted out of office. Poll: Majority of Americans embarrassed by US pandemic response 01:41 "We rarely publish editorials signed by all the editors," said Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the medical journal and an author of the new editorial.

New England Journal of Medicine calls for US leadership to be voted out over Covid-19 failure - CNN

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For Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar, Covid-19 brought an onslaught of symptoms from chest pains to an 11-day migraine, three positive test results, and a period in hospital. Seven months later, the rollercoaster is far from over: the 36-year-old from Byron Bay, Australia is still experiencing symptoms – including difficulties with thinking that are often described as “brain fog”. “Brain fog seems like such an inferior description of what is actually going on. It’s completely crippling. I am unable to think clearly enough to [do] anything,” says Nicholson-McKellar, adding that the experience would be better described as cognitive impairment. The consequences, she says, have been enormous. “I can’t work more than one to two hours a day and even just leaving the house to get some shopping can be a challenge,” she says. “When I get tired it becomes much worse and sometimes all I can do is lay in bed and watch TV.” Brain fog has made her forgetful to the point that she says she burns pots while cooking. “It often prevents me from being able to have a coherent conversation or write a text message or email,” she adds. “I feel like a shadow of my former self. I am not living right now, I am simply existing.” Nicholson-McKellar is far from alone.

'Brain fog': the people struggling to think clearly months after Covid | World news | The Guardian

• More innocent than the flu, right?