Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020
It’s not clear whether Trump and his “wife” contracted coronavirus from his adviser Hope Hicks or whether all three contracted it from another source.
The New York Times reports:
Ms. Hicks is the closest person to the president known to have contracted the virus. She traveled with Mr. Trump to the presidential debate in Ohio on Tuesday and accompanied him aboard Air Force One to Minnesota for a campaign rally on Wednesday night.
…
Officials at the White House have known since Wednesday evening that she had the virus. Her condition was first reported by Bloomberg News, which also said that she had been quarantined on the flight home. Ms. Hicks, 31, began showing symptoms during the president’s Minnesota rally and she exited from the back of Air Force One. She tested positive on Thursday.
And this, in a separate Times article:
Mr. Trump’s positive test result could pose immediate difficulties for the future of his campaign against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger, with just 33 days before the election on Nov. 3. Even if Mr. Trump, 74, remains asymptomatic, he will have to withdraw from the campaign trail and stay isolated in the White House for an unknown period of time. If he becomes sick, it could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all.
Even if he does not become seriously ill, the positive test could prove devastating to his political fortunes given his months of diminishing the seriousness of the pandemic even as the virus was still ravaging the country and killing about 1,000 more Americans every day. He has repeatedly predicted the virus “is going to disappear,” asserted that it was under control and insisted that the country was “rounding the corner” to the end of the crisis. He has scorned scientists, saying they were mistaken on the severity of the situation.
Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section. But please, let’s be like Michelle Obama and keep to the high road.
(Trump image via screen grab.)
On another front, could the treatments be dictated by Trump, himself? I find it hard to believe a proper physician would prescribe the highest dose of a yet-unproven antibody cocktail followed so closely by the administration of Remdesevir. I fully expect the next memo to report the use of steroids. Both Remdesevir and steroids are reportedly not all that effective in the early stages of the disease. And not for everybody.
Regardless of the spin they’re going to attempt here, the fever and the hospital are not signs to be taken lightly.
Just imagine the outrage if Biden had tested positive and canceled the second debate?
I mean, really, Trump lies all the time and it wouldn’t surprise me one teeny-weeny bit were he to pop up in 15 days declaring that he “beat the virus”, only for someone to leak out the truth that he hadn’t had it at all. Oh dear. Has Pollyanna morphed into a conspiracy theorist? Only time will tell.
This will now become a day by day situation. We’ll just have to see how far and wide the contact tracing goes.