I woke up Friday to my radio alarm telling me the president and Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus.
Unlike other mornings when I wake up to the NPR headlines at the top of the hour, there were no other headlines other than the president’s health status. No reporter telling me about the wildfires in California or the latest unemployment numbers. It felt as though the world had stopped rotating around its axis because the president was sick.
My initial reaction was not shock, but sadness. I truly hope he recovers quickly. My second thought was concern that Joe Biden might have been infected because he stood in close proximity to the president for nearly two hours at the debate debacle.
As the day proceeded and news of additional positive results trickled out among the people in Trump’s sphere, I knew the numbers were going to rise on a daily basis. Even Joe Biden is not out of the woods. The virus is like a spider’s web that grows bigger and bigger and catches more victims in its silken fibers.
It is now four days since the world learned of the positive test. Clearly, the president is suffering from much more than the “sniffles.” But getting the truth out of the White House is like pulling teeth. The president’s doctor, Dr. Sean P. Conley, is soft-pedaling the information because he wants to trick his patient into thinking he’s just fine. He wanted to try to “reflect an upbeat attitude.” Presumably, he is also following the wishes of the president, who wishes to keep his health issues private.
What about the truth? Doesn’t the public have a right to know the truth? In this situation, who has the greater right, the president or the public?
Without full transparency and intimate details of the president’s condition, what the public is left with is hypothesizing by experts who have been treating COVID-19 patients since the beginning of the pandemic.
So far we know that the president was injected with an experimental drug created by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. It was a cocktail of antibodies designed to help the immune system fight the virus. In addition Trump is taking remdesivir, manufactured by Gilead Science, which is supposed to curb the virus’s ability to multiply. The latest news is that he is taking dexamethasone, which is an anti-inflammatory steroid often taken by people with rheumatoid arthritis.
I feel as though I’m watching an episode of House, where the doctors pump the patient with tons of different drugs, investigate their homes looking under the kitchen sink and in the refrigerator to find clues, all the while taking pain medications that affect their cognitive abilities and have wild affairs in the supply closet. Assuming he makes a quick recovery, which drug will get to take the credit?
But, he’s the president of the United States and he gets to have it all. He is the most important man on the planet and the rules of normal behavior do not apply to him. Do Melania, Chris Christie, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Lee, and the unknown victims get to receive the same presidential treatment? What if he lives and one of his advisers dies because they didn’t get the magic cure?
If the cocktail of drugs given to the president proves to be the cure for the coronavirus, will every person who tests positive be able to immediately be put on the drugs? Surely, the government can fork over the funding to ensure that happens. If it worked for the president, why shouldn’t the rest of the world’s victims, regardless of race, sex, creed, economic status, immigrant status, or any other qualifier, be eligible to get the drugs?
Further, I trust all stops are being pulled to ensure contact tracing is proceeding on high gear to track down all the people who were exposed and possibly infected by the president. Will the public be informed as to when he started to feel sick and when exactly he was tested? Wouldn’t that help to catch the super-spreading of the virus caused by the president?
Finally, the president says he’s definitely getting to know the coronavirus and it has been an education. Let’s hope he’s catching a serious case of empathy and compassion in the process as well and his administration will finally take the pandemic seriously. The proof will be in the pudding if everyone is seen wearing masks and social distancing.
(Susannah Colt lives in Whitefield. She can be reached at susannahbcolt@gmail.com.)