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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump faced a new backlash on Tuesday for removing his mask when he returned to the White House and urging Americans not to fear the COVID-19 disease that has killed more. than 209,000 people in the country and put him in the hospital.
Trump arrived at the White House Monday in a made-for-television show in which he alighted from his Marine One helicopter wearing a white surgical mask only to remove it as he posed, waving and waving, on the mansion’s south portico.
“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid,” Trump said in a video after his return from the Walter Reed Medical Center military hospital outside Washington, where he was treated for the illness caused by the coronavirus.
“I’m better, and maybe I’m immune, I don’t know,” he added, flanked by American flags and with the Washington Monument in the background. “Get out there. Be careful.”
Trump, who was treated by an army of doctors and received experimental treatment, has repeatedly downplayed a disease that has killed more than 1 million people worldwide and left his own country with the highest death toll in the world.
The Republican president, who is running for re-election against Democrat Joe Biden in the Nov.3 election, was admitted to hospital on Friday after being diagnosed with the disease.
Trump has repeatedly circumvented social distancing guidelines meant to slow the spread of the virus and ignored his own medical advisers. He also mocked Biden in the presidential debate last Tuesday for wearing a mask at events, even when he is away from others.
His decision to remove his mask after climbing the stairs of the South Portico of the White House – a position that alienated him from others – and his insistence that Americans should not fear the disease horrified some doctors.
“I was horrified when he said COVID is not to be feared,” said William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
“This is a disease that is killing about a thousand people a day, it has torpedoed the economy, it has put people out of work. This is a virus that must be respected and feared,” he added.
Democrats also weighed in. “This is a tragic leadership failure,” tweeted Democratic Senator Chris Coons.
But Trump described himself as a man who overcame the disease and emerged stronger.
“If the president returns to the election campaign, he will be an invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick that the Democrats threw at him, but also the Chinese virus,” he wrote on Twitter.
Biden responded quickly on Twitter with images of himself donning a mask and Trump removing his. A caption read: “Masks matter. They save lives.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere said every precaution was being taken to protect the president and his family. Physical access to Trump would be limited and those close to him would wear appropriate protective gear.
Questions continue to swirl about Trump’s true state of health after a weekend in which his doctors offered conflicting or opaque assessments of his condition.
His oxygen saturation dropped enough to require supplemental oxygen on Friday and Saturday and he will receive his last intravenous dose of the antiviral drug, remdesivir, at the White House on Tuesday, his doctors said.
KICKBACK POSSIBLE
Many aides and confidants have been diagnosed with the disease since he announced last week that he had tested positive, intensifying scrutiny and criticism of the administration’s handling of the pandemic.
Trump has no public events on his schedule Tuesday and it is unclear when he will be able to resume a full program, return to the Oval Office or return to the election campaign.
As polls showed Trump lagging further behind Biden, Vice President Mike Pence beefed up his campaign schedule, adding stops in the changing states of Nevada and Arizona on Thursday, Trump’s campaign announced.
A Reuters / Ipsos poll conducted Friday and Saturday after the president tested positive for the coronavirus, found that Biden led Trump by 10 percentage points nationally and that nearly two-thirds of Americans thought Trump likely would not have quit. infected if he had taken the virus. more serious.
The severity of Trump’s illness has been the subject of intense speculation, with some experts pointing out that as an older, overweight man, he was in a category more likely to develop serious complications or die from it.
#GaspingForAir started trending on Twitter after a video showed Trump appeared to take several deep breaths while standing on the balcony of the White House.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious disease expert, told CNN that Trump looked fine when he left the hospital, but noted that patients sometimes have a setback five days after becoming ill.
“It looks good,” said Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Sometimes when you have five days, you are going to have a reversal … It is unlikely to happen, but they must be vigilant.”
(Additional reporting by Alexandra Alper, Doina Chiacu, Ross Colvin, Steve Holland, and Mohammad Zargham in Washington and Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; written by Arshad Mohammed, edited by Ross Colvin and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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