Donald Trump's troubling vital signs

[Boats]

Donald Trump's troubling vital signs
By: Richard Galant - CNN Opinion News - 10-11-20
Re: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/11/opini...Most+Recent%29

(CNN)Doctors have been searching for precise indicators of the health of their patients at least since the early 1600s, when a professor of medicine, Santorio Santori, helped perfect devices to measure body temperature and pulse rate. His goal, as Fabrizio Bigotti wrote, was "medical mathematics."

Today, caregivers in hospitals measure such vital signs every few hours. President Donald Trump's doctor, Sean Conley, provided fragmentary information on his patient's vital signs this week as he briefed reporters in front of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. But he was far from transparent about the full nature and course of Trump's Covid-19 illness.

"Conley has served as Trump's publicist in a white coat, reassuring Americans at every turn that Trump is doing well, while leaving out conspicuous details," wrote James Hamblin, a doctor, in the Atlantic.

Conley wouldn't say, for example, when Trump last tested negative for the virus and refused to describe the condition of the President's lungs (the disease typically attacks the lungs early in infection).

As David Axelrod pointed out, Trump only disclosed his illness after Bloomberg reported Oct. 1 that his adviser Hope Hicks had contracted the disease. "The 74-year-old President has been about as forthcoming with his medical records as he has his tax returns and there are many reasons he would have wanted to stifle his Covid test in the final weeks of a tough reelection campaign," Axelrod wrote. "To admit he had Covid-19 would undermine Trump's downplaying of the virus, dismissal of masks and expose as irresponsible his insistence on holding large in-person events."

With a presidential election three weeks away, Trump's vital signs are of more than historical interest. In fact, they are becoming entwined with key questions about where America is heading in a perilous time, when he is far behind Joe Biden in the polls and refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power, should he lose. Trump himself declared in an interview with Maria Bartiromo Thursday, "I am a perfect physical specimen and I'm extremely young."

But Trump's infrequent and staged appearances, his raspy voice, his motorcade around Walter Reed and his rip-off-the-mask return to the White House has left many doubtful that he's fully recovered -- and in a position to make presidential-level decisions.

Cartoon Link: https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/asse...xlarge-169.jpg

Dr. Chris Pernell, who works at a New Jersey hospital, lost her father to the coronavirus in April. When she thinks of the impact on her family and countless others, Pernell wrote, she can't help but conclude that "the President of the United States is a clear threat to public health. He mocks infection prevention guidelines, including mask wearing, and taunts those who believe in the science of public health..."

"The President lives in an alternate bubble. In his world, he has unhindered access to medical care. He has physicians who are willing to spin details about his condition to keep the public guessing. He receives experimental drugs, including an antibody cocktail, which was approved for compassionate use and is unavailable to most Americans."

No help from Washington

Trump abruptly called off negotiations with House Democrats on a new stimulus bill, only to indicate a short while later that he wanted to reach a deal after all. "Trump is prone to making surprise announcements out of the blue and often looks for ways to stir public reaction with extreme actions," wrote Michael D'Antonio. Amid speculation that "steroids, like the dexamethasone he's currently taking," could be responsible for his shifting moods, "Trump's personal history suggests something deeper may also be at work...from an early age he exhibited a kind of unruliness that could veer toward self-destruction."

Writing for Vox, Aaron Rupar pointed out that, "while it might be tempting to surmise that Trump's compromised health has resulted in his odd behavior since his coronavirus diagnosis -- including a number of bizarre photo ops and incoherent, angry binges of posting on Twitter -- the truth is all of this is more or less on brand for Trump."

It's all one big story

Increasingly the election and the pandemic are merging into one story. In a CNN poll that showed Trump 16 points behind Biden, 60% percent of Americans disapproved of Trump's handling of the coronavirus, with even more saying they didn't believe he acted responsibly in dealing with the risk of infection to those around him. Trump is far behind Biden with older voters and with women.

"A little more than an hour after President Trump, infected with the coronavirus, made a rash and reckless return to the White House," wrote Errol Louis, "Democratic challenger Joe Biden made clear at a televised NBC town hall why he is leading Trump in every national poll and in most top battleground states as well. The leading issue in the November 3 election is the federal response to Covid-19. Biden has checkmated Trump on the issue," by acknowledging the scope of the crisis, showing empathy and proposing a common-sense plan to deal with it.

Trump's "recklessness knows no bounds," wrote Jeffrey Sachs. "Even on Monday, with all of the dangers he has caused to himself, his wife, his staff and his fellow politicians, and with all of the suffering and deaths across the nation, he tweets, 'Don't be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life.'"

The choice is not between an effective response to the pandemic and saving the economy, Sachs noted. "Trump and his minions can't seem to understand the most basic point: the way to control the pandemic is through systematic public health measures ... such as wearing face masks, bans on large events, physical distancing, contact tracing, quarantining, monitoring of symptoms at workplaces and transit areas, limits on travel and more."

Trump's approach has had consequences, wrote Peniel Joseph. "The President's pathological behavior, personal mendacity, flouting of the rules of Covid-19 precaution and overall endangering of democracy encourages the conspiracy-wielding, coronavirus-denying Americans among Trump's base who embrace a distorted version of reality that has corrupted our politics and corroded our national identity."

Frida Ghitis wondered about the Sept. 26 Rose Garden ceremony where Trump announced the choice of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: It was "a shocking spectacle of hubris ..."

"Those of us who watched the crowded, mostly mask-less nomination announcement, could barely believe our eyes -- the crowds, the hugs, the kisses. It only made sense that it became a likely super-spreader event ... Why weren't they wearing masks, indoors or outside the White House? Because Trump apparently thinks masks undercut the image of normalcy that will help him win reelection. It's a foolish and immoral strategy. Americans know this is no normal time."

Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, wrote, "sadly, we will look back at this episode and see photographs of White House aides, top officials, and elected leaders gathered together, hugging, laughing, and sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at mostly mask-less events, mere feet away from the President -- all during a global health catastrophe.

"This is not the image of an administration rushing to contain a biological threat. It's the image of it carelessly spreading one."