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When exactly did Donald Trump get infected? When was the first corona test positive? How bad is the president of the United States really? Many questions about Trump’s Covid 19 disease remain unanswered. And the official information does not quite coincide with what is known so far about a typical course of the disease.
Deviations in the course of the disease are quite possible. Covid-19 develops very differently from patient to patient and can cause a wide range of symptoms (read more here). But there are two main aspects of Trump’s illness that stand out.
Why was he receiving dexamethasone?
On the one hand, there are conflicting statements from Trump’s personal physician, Sean P. Conley. He had initially denied that the president of the United States depended on oxygen therapy. It wasn’t until Sunday that Conley confirmed that the president’s oxygen levels had dropped Friday morning. Several US media had previously reported on it. Trump also received oxygen, according to Conley. However, the president was pretty sure that he would not need the therapy.
The fact that Covid-19 patients appear to be in shape even though their oxygen levels have already dropped significantly is a well-known problem with the disease. (Read more about this here). In general, many people with pneumonia experience shortness of breath. Doctors don’t know exactly why this is not always the case with Covid-19. The alveoli in the lungs can be so damaged that although there is a lack of oxygen, the carbon dioxide that normally causes shortness of breath does not accumulate.
This could explain why Trump was apparently convinced that he did not need oxygen therapy. Trump had recently spoken on multiple videos and showed no signs of shortness of breath. However, that doesn’t automatically mean you don’t have pneumonia. Personal physician Conley said he was not sure whether Trump received oxygen on Saturday, but if so, then only “very, very limited.” Conley explained her conflicting statements by saying that she did not want to negatively influence the course of the president’s illness.
The personal physician also confirmed that Trump had been treated with steroids. This also suggests that the course of the illness of the President of the United States is more serious than Conley’s early statements would lead to believe. Additionally, Trump received the drug Remdesivir, which is also recommended only for seriously ill patients. (Read more about this here).
Dexamethasone has been a steroid that has been used in medicine for decades and is one of the synthetic glucocorticoids, often simply called cortisone. It inhibits inflammation and weakens the body’s immune response. The effect is approximately 30 times stronger than the natural glucocorticoids that the body produces on its own. (Read more about this here).
If Covid-19 is severe, the so-called cytokine storm often occurs – a life-threatening immune system malfunction. In the case of Covid 19 disease, dexamethasone does not attack the virus itself, but it counteracts this malfunction of the immune system. In mild cases, taking dexamethasone could even be harmful because the immune system is depressed. Therefore, it would be unusual for Trump’s doctors to have decided to administer dexamethasone despite a mild course.
How did the president get sick so fast?
What’s unusual about the known course of Trump’s illness is that he showed symptoms so quickly after an initial positive test result, although he was said to have been routinely tested for the coronavirus at regular intervals.
Therefore, the US media speculates that a first test could have been positive earlier, but Trump may have hidden it. The “New York Times” reports that a quick test had already yielded a positive result on Thursday morning (local time) and is based on inside information.
The infection was officially confirmed after a more reliable PCR test on Friday night. That same day, the president’s oxygen levels fell for the first time, according to information from the personal physician. This suggests that Trump became infected long before the first official positive test result.
An average of five to six days pass between infection and illness. Therefore, the celebration of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination as Supreme Court Justice last Saturday is seen as a potential wide-spread event. Several participants in the event tested positive.
That raises the question of how reliable the president’s testing strategy was. The White House had required rapid crown tests for all who wanted to be admitted to the seat of government. However, according to reports from the New York Times, these rapid tests often give unreliable results. In people who do not yet have any symptoms, the test does not detect one in three infected people. The White House is apparently using the tests for a purpose for which they were not designed at all.
In an emergency approval, the US Food and Drug Administration recommends use only within the first seven days of symptoms. However, since infected people are highly likely to be contagious before the first symptoms appear, a negative rapid test does not guarantee safety.
Much more reliable would be PCR tests that could detect a Sars-CoV-2 infection in a study up to six days before the onset of symptoms. But their results are not available in 15 minutes, as is the case with the rapid tests used by the White House. This shows that rapid tests are not a substitute for observing the rules of distance and hygiene and are only partially adequate to detect an infection. But at the White House, a negative rapid test result was apparently enough to attend official meetings, without a mask.
