Donald Trump left Walter Reed Medical Center and returned to the White House Monday night, removing his mask upon arrival, saying he “learned so much” about coronavirus during his stay.
Trump said he knew one thing “for certain” in a video recorded for Twitter: “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. We’re gonna beat it. We have the best medical equipment, we have the best medicines, all developed recently. And you’re gonna beat it. I went. I didn’t feel so good. And two days ago, I could have left two days ago. I felt great. Like better than I have in a long time. I said just recently, better than 20 years ago.”
Trump has been treated with dexamethasone for COVID-19, “a steroid that has a range of potential side effects including mental problems such as aggression, agitation, and anxiety,” according to Newsweek.
Newsweek adds: “As well as dexamethasone, the president is also having a monoclonal antibody therapy that mimics the proteins the body creates to fight infection, and the antiviral drug remdesivir. In addition to oxygen, he has also been given Zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and aspirin.”
“Don’t let it take over your lives,” Trump instructed followers. “Don’t let it take over your lives. Don’t let that happen. We have the greatest country in the world. We’re going back. We’re going back to work. We’re gonna be out front. As your leader I had to do that. I knew there’s danger to it. But I had to do it. I stood out front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. I know there’s a risk. I know there’s a danger, but that’s okay. And now I’m better, but maybe I’m immune! I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there.”
“The vaccines are coming momentarily.”
The Hill reports: “There are already signs that the president is treading on treacherous ground. A new CNN poll released Monday found large swaths of the country neither believing the White House’s messaging on the president’s health nor judging him to have acted responsibly in relation to others. The poll found that a startling 69 percent of adults believed either ‘nothing at all’ or ‘just some’ of what they heard from the White House about the president’s health. In addition, 63 percent of adults believed Trump had acted irresponsibly in relation to the risk of infection for people who have been around him recently.”
Said Joe Biden on Monday night: “You have about 1,000 people a day getting the coronavirus. It’s a significant concern. I hope no one walks away with the message thinking it’s not a problem. It’s a serious problem. It’s an international pandemic. Anybody who contracts the virus by essentially saying, masks don’t matter, social distancing doesn’t matter, I think is responsible for what happens to them. I view wearing this mask, not so much protecting me, but as a patriotic responsibility.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday night that there could still be a reversal: I’m not involved in [Trump’s] primary care. But the issue is that he’s still early enough in the disease that it’s no secret that if you look at the clinical course of people sometimes, when you’re five to eight days in, you can have a reversal. Reversal meaning going in the wrong direction and getting into trouble. It’s unlikely that it will happen, but they need to be heads up for it. He knows it. The physicians know it. So they’re going to keep an eye out on it. They’re going to try and do that within the confines of the White House as opposed to in the hospital. You’re not out of it until you’ve gotten several days out and doing well, but he certainly does look very well. I mean you don’t need me to tell you that. You saw the way he came out of the helicopter.”
Fauci also said that he’s “strongly suspicious” that the antibody cocktail Regeneron helped Trump: “We’ve had experience with other diseases. Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody was one of the two types of antibodies that was very successful with Ebola and the very fact that it was successful in Ebola, another very serious viral infection, had us be cautiously optimistic that monoclonal antibodies, which are a very specific protein, right, that the body makes that you can produce in very large amounts and infuse it into an individual by an IV infusion, has the potential to really be something very, very important in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.. The President got that as a compassionate use, and whether or not it was that that got him better, I’m strongly suspicious that it was, but obviously you can’t prove that until you do a number of studies that prove that it actually works.”
