|
U.S. President Trump Has Caught ‘The Flu’
U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Both do not (yet) show symptoms.
The immediate index case is likely one of his top aides:
News of the Trumps' positive tests came just hours after it was reported that the president's top aide Hope Hicks had tested positive for the coronavirus. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has tested negative for the virus, a senior White House official told CBS News.
Trump and his aide have had lots of recent contacts:
There is no one closer to Mr. Trump than Ms. Hicks, who returned to the White House this year after leaving her position as communications director in 2018, and on Wednesday traveled with the president on Air Force One to Minnesota. She began feeling sick around the time of the campaign rally he held there, according to one person familiar with the events, and was quarantined on the return flight to Washington, where she disembarked from the back entrance of the plane.
Her positive diagnosis came on Thursday, according to the person familiar with her case, but the White House made no announcement about the situation, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, who had also been on the plane and exposed to Ms. Hicks, then held a briefing with reporters without mentioning it or wearing a mask.
Only after Bloomberg News reported Ms. Hicks’s condition did Mr. Trump confirm it during an appearance on Thursday night on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, where he said he was waiting for his own test results.
Despite knowing that his aide had tested positive and had probably already infected him Trump still held a fundraiser:
"After White House officials learned of Hicks’ symptoms, Trump & his entourage flew to New Jersey, where he attended a fundraiser & delivered a speech. Trump was in close contact with dozens of other people, including campaign supporters at a roundtable."
There will probably be a whole cluster of infected people around the president:
Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing – 7:48 UTC · Oct 2, 2020
BREAKING—we now know Hope Hicks’s testing timeline:
📌 Tuesday before debate: NEGATIVE
📌 Wednesday morning: NEGATIVE
📌 Wednesday mid day illness onset
📌 Wednesday mid day: POSITIVE
📌 Thursday evening Trump and FLOTUS: POSITIVE
Incubation period thread below. #COVID19
The White House has been using a relatively unreliable quick tests and additional RT-PCR testing when the quick test showed a probably positive case. The wording of the White House physician statement seems to say that Trump has had both tests:
This evening I received confirmation that both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Dr. Ding's thread includes some interesting graphics.
bigger
Depending on the point in time Trump was infected he might have infected candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday during their quite lively debate.
bigger
This shows the time periods during which the various tests will more or less react:
bigger
Trump and his wife may still have five days before symptoms might appear.
Trump is 74 years old and obese. He has a quite high risk of a bad outcome:
(Note: The percentages shown above are rough estimates and only approximate the real numbers.)
bigger
The White House and Trump personally have been extremely negligent with regards to infection protection. Just two week ago we noted that Israeli and Arab delegations, including the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahoo, met unprotected at the White House to sign an agreement. At the same time several White House staffers tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
Trump's daughter said that it was "A historic moment":
bigger
There is already a lot of joking about Trump's earlier statements about how its 'just a flu' and how 'it will go away' :
Trump: I tested positive for Covid… actually I tested more positive than anyone. Doctors are amazed by how positive I tested, they can't believe it, they tell me, Donald, you are over 100 percent covid, it defies known science, which of course… science is fake news …
I am sure the White House has lots of hydroxychloroquine for Trump to take."With zinc!" of course. But I guess that his doctors will tell him to avoid it because of the cardiac risk at his age.
I do not wish anyone, not even Trump, to get Covid-19. May this whole development be a lesson to him.
Ahhh … the Curse of Tippecanoe could strike again!
The curse refers to US Presidents elected in years divisible by the number 20 dying in office, not necessarily in the term that starts the year after the election occurring in the year that is divisible by the number 20.
James the musician in British Columbia, you’re the resident astrologer here I presume?
“Tecumseh’s Curse” by Marjorie Orr
[Jupiter–Saturn conjunctions have] a special relevance to the United States and American history. One of the key dates after the Declaration of 1776, when hostilities with the British came to an end and American independence was formally recognized in 1783, fell during the Saturn–Jupiter conjunction in Capricorn.
More tragically, every American president in the past 200 years who has been inaugurated on a Jupiter–Saturn conjunction has either been assassinated or survived an assassination attempt or else has died while in office; only two, Thomas Jefferson and James Munroe, are exceptions to this rule. And GW Bush though 9/11 happened on his watch which arguably soaked up the energy.
[John] F. Kennedy, elected in the hope of a new ‘Camelot’ in 1960, with Jupiter–Saturn in Capricorn, was dramatically shot in 1963 in Dallas. Ronald Reagan, elected on a ticket to reduce taxes, deregulate the economy and strengthen defences, was a Hollywood-style president, bringing flamboyant promises after Jimmy Carter’s lacklustre term of office. Reagan, inaugurated under Jupiter–Saturn in Libra, survived serious injuries sustained in an assassination attempt in 1981.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the reforming president, was voted in for an unprecedented four terms, the second of which, in 1940, fell during Jupiter–Saturn in Taurus. He created a mood of hope with his uplifting ‘fireside chat’ style of radio broadcast. He died in office three months after his fourth inauguration in 1945, aged 63.
Warren Harding, elected in 1920 with Jupiter–Saturn in Taurus, an unremarkable compromise candidate, represented a desire for normality after the unsettled years of the First World War. His sudden, early death at the age of 58 in 1923 was attributed to the shock of learning of the imminent exposure of corruption in his Cabinet, on a scale unprecedented in White House history.
William McKinley, voted to a second term of office in 1900 under Jupiter–Saturn in Capricorn, was an expansionist president who added to America’s colonial empire and aggressively boosted trade on a global scale. He survived less than a year of his second term, being shot by an anarchist on 19 September and dying eight days later; he was 58 years old.
James Garfield, elected with Jupiter–Saturn in Taurus in 1880, upset his party by insisting on the freedom to make political appointments as he chose, and was shot by a deranged admirer of his critics in the July of his inauguration year, dying two months later from the wounds, aged 50. He was succeeded by Chester Arthur, whose health suffered badly under the strain of office.
Most famously of all Abraham Lincoln, elected for his first term of office on the Jupiter–Saturn conjunction of 1860 in Virgo, promoted national unity and declared an end to slavery. He survived through the years of the Civil War to his second term, but was shot by an actor in April 1865, months after his second inauguration; he was 56.
Elected in 1841 on the run-up to the conjunction in Capricorn, William Henry Harrison campaigned on his military reputation as a log-cabin frontiersman and victor over the Native Americans. He caught pneumonia at his inauguration and died a month later.
Intriguingly Thomas Jefferson, born in 1763 and one of only two presidents to survive a Jupiter–Saturn election, has the conjunction in his birth chart in Leo and Virgo. Roosevelt, who was born in 1882 and who survived through to his fourth term, also has a Saturn–Jupiter conjunction in Taurus in his chart.
What Orr omits to say, but which I have seen on some other online sites, is that for the “curse” to be effective, such Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions (which occur every 20 years) usually take place in the so-called Earth signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo.
The last such conjunction occurred in the sign of Taurus in the year 2000. As we all know, George W Bush became President in that year yet survived both his terms. Although it could be argued that since he scraped in through the blessing of the Electoral College and some dubious vote counts in Florida state that year, he wasn’t a legit target for the curse.
Reagan survived the assassination attempt in 1981 as the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1980 occurred in the sign of Libra (not an earth sign).
The next Jupiter-Saturn conjunction takes place in December 2020 in the sign of Aquarius.
All the above not to be taken seriously of course.
Posted by: Jen | Oct 2 2020 11:42 utc | 7
49 old hippie – For your edification, from a fellow Dead Head, here’s what covid-19 looks like, from an advanced senior survivor:
You are taking your daily walking loop in the evening through the near-shore hills to the beach at sunset, there is an onshore breeze and you take a deep breath. You notice a stench like 100 of all the stenches in your life: dumpster leakage, pit toilet, damp gym clothes. Your nose feels itchy like a pre-cold, your throat is sore like pre-strep and your eyes ache in your sockets like pre-flu, as you climb the hill towards home. Damn, you think. The spring weather is so nice!
You eat a garden salad and rice, take a vitamin C, a long hot shower, carefully brush and gargle with hydrogen peroxide. It’s going to be a day in bed tomorrow, you have the tell-tail headache dizzies.
At 4:30AM you wake in someone else’s reality, semi-detached, on your hands and knees in a torn up bed, head on fire, body and bed soaked in sweat, lungs barking like an old dog. You can’t seem to catch your breath. Sleep is now impossible.
But you were a warrior in your day, the survivor of 1,000 struggles, so you get up in the darkness and quiet, put on your morning track suit, make a strong cup of espresso and head out for a jog. The spring air is chill but refreshing, and though today you can’t get up ‘on step’, you shuffle along until the fever breaks and you hit ‘the runner’s wall’. You’re breathing easier now, coughing into your hand. It will be OK, you think.
The day passes like any flu day, eating fresh fruit, drinking herb tea, cotton-between-the-ears idly unable to focus while the washing machine and dryer spin your sweaty bed clothes and track suit clean again. Make the bed, can’t think of anything that matters, you doze into the evening and wake in darkness. You’ve missed your sunset walk, and your arms and legs are heavy, but you manage to walk out to the garden and watch the first stars.
The first week goes by like that. No appetite, no focus, coughing and can’t seem to catch your breath, but you’re still running every morning and are sure it will be over soon. You start lifting your hand weights for something to pass the time. 100 reps. 500 reps, 1000.
A week later, it’s 4:30AM you wake again on your hands and knees in a torn up bed, head on fire, body and bed soaked in sweat, lungs barking like an old cow bellowing in a far foggy field. Hawwung, hawwung, hawwung.
The stark reality hits you. Those stories on the news. You must have The Thing, man! The covid! But you’ve never had a doctor, never needed one. You have ‘old strength’, a survivor of 100 injuries and contagion you’ve used up your 7 lives and then some.
More coffee, more running, intently now. Must reach ‘the runner’s wall’, then you can breath, then you can think. But your Nonin Onyx falling O2 levels and your ice-blue hands tell you that you’re losing. When you take off your track shoes, your feet are brown-purple, like a dead junkie.
So you redouble your activity. Stay off the couch. Short naps. Eat standing at the stove, then back outside. Drink water from the hose, soak your head. Spend every warm sunny spring day digging the garden bare-chested in the sun, hacking the brambles back with a machete, watching the clouds while you rest, then off for another jog.
It seems to work. But then your urine turns orange red and your liver feels like you’re punched in the gut and the bouts of constipation and diarrhea. You’ve spent the last weeks rebuilding your road bike, so now it’s the Tour de France in your mind. As soon as you’ve had a morning smoothie and the fog burns off, you hit the trail. 10 miles. 20 miles. Soon you’re riding marathons. Then super-marathons.
Your blood O2 is slowly rising and your resting heartbeat is below 90 now. There’s that mountain lake you wanted to visit. You decide to run it. 14 mile cross-country steeplechase in a welcoming hot sun, sitting there by the lake, playing with the frogs and their rafts of bubble eggs, enjoying early spring flowers.
The run back downhill is thrilling and at some point without realizing it, you can smell again. Everything. All of it. The air, the woods, the fresh earth. You are a wolf running in the forest chasing the deer, running like you did when you were 28. How is this possible? Is it a dream?
You laugh that you beat covid after five weeks without pills, potions, elixirs, or Dr Fauci’s Patented Miracle Cure Vaxx. And now you know, you KNOW, at last, what the word ‘Freedom’ really means.
Or you can lay there until the ambulance comes, secure in the now proven knowledge their ER-ICU chemical coma will either leave you dead or an invalid in hospice, and either way, medically-bankrupted and preternaturally old. Your choice!
Posted by: Lawrence Sommers | Oct 2 2020 17:05 utc | 75
|
