[ad_1]
The last-minute limo outing came with Trump’s doctors satisfied enough with his progress to suggest the possibility of his discharge Monday.
This photograph released by the White House shows the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and his chief of staff (not pictured) participating in a phone call with the vice president, secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of USA on October 4, 2020, in his conference room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Image: AFP.
WASHINGTON (AP) – US President Donald Trump sparked an angry backlash from the medical community Sunday with a protocol-breaking visit to supporters outside the hospital where he is being treated for the highly infectious and life-threatening novel coronavirus. .
He was masked as he waved from inside his bulletproof vehicle during the short drive outside the Walter Reed Military Medical Center near Washington, which seemed designed to retract the narrative about improving his health after a weekend of confusing messages from your doctors.
The last-minute limo outing came with Trump’s doctors satisfied enough with his progress to suggest the possibility of his discharge Monday.
But experts complained that the exit violated their own government’s public health guidelines that require patients to isolate themselves while on treatment and still excrete the virus, and jeopardize the protection of the Secret Service.
Trump, who has been reprimanded repeatedly for disobeying public health guidelines and spreading misinformation about the pandemic, said in a video that appeared on Twitter just before the appearance that he had “learned a lot about COVID” by “actually going to school. “as I said. has fought the virus.
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2020
But health experts took to the airwaves and social media to criticize the “trick,” which they said proved he had learned nothing at all.
“Every person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary presidential ‘step’ now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” said James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University.
“They can get sick. They can die. For the political theater. Ordered by Trump to risk their lives for the theater. This is insane.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere said “appropriate” precautions were taken to protect Trump and his support personnel, including protective gear.
“The movement was authorized by the medical team as insurance,” he added.
But Zeke Emanuel, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and a regular television expert, described the appearance as “embarrassing.”
“Having your Secret Service agents drive with a COVID-19 patient, with the windows closed no less, puts them unnecessarily at risk of infection. And for what? A public relations stunt,” he tweeted.
CONFUSED MESSAGES
The episode came hours after a briefing by Trump’s medical team, who said he had “continued to improve” and could be returned to the White House, which has the facilities to treat and isolate the president, as early as Monday.
The president was airlifted to Walter Reed with a high fever on Friday after a “rapid progression” of his illness, with his oxygen levels dropping worryingly low, Trump’s physician, Sean Conley, said in a briefing on Sunday.
Health experts have complained that messages from the administration, and in particular Trump’s medical team, have caused widespread confusion.
Conley admitted Sunday that he had withheld from the public the fact that the president had received extra oxygen, in an attempt to reflect an “optimistic attitude.”
And he gave an upbeat account of Trump’s progress on Saturday, only for White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to tell reporters immediately afterward that Trump’s condition had been “very concerning” and that “not yet. he was on a clear path to a full recovery. ” “
‘WHITE HOUSE CLUSTER’
With his tough reelection campaign in his final month against Democratic rival Joe Biden, Trump’s diagnosis and hospitalization have left him on the sidelines of what he does best: campaign.
Meanwhile, Biden, who announced his latest negative test for the virus on Sunday, will start the week with a trip Monday to the key state of Florida.
But Trump and his advisers have done their best to project a sense of continuity.
His deputy campaign manager, Jason Miller, told ABC on Sunday that he had spoken to Trump for half an hour on Saturday and that the president was “making jokes.”
But controversy has grown over the possibility that Trump has exposed many others to COVID-19 even after a close aide tested positive.
A timeline provided by his counselors and doctors suggested that he met with more than 30 donors Thursday in Bedminster, New Jersey, even after learning that Hope Hicks had the virus, and only hours before she announced her own positive test.
There were more than 200 people at the fundraiser, and an ongoing contact tracing operation in New Jersey was looking for thousands of people who may have been exposed.
All of this came in a week when a Wall street journal/ The NBC poll, conducted two days after a painful presidential debate with Biden but before news of Trump’s illness surfaced, gave Biden a significant 53-39% lead among registered voters.
In addition to Trump and Hicks, numerous insiders from the White House and at least three Republican senators have contracted COVID-19, along with First Lady Melania Trump, who has not experienced serious symptoms.
Public health experts have voiced alarm at the “White House group” that has been linked to the Sept. 26 celebration in Rose Garden of Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Download the EWN app on your iOS or Android device.
[ad_2]
