Covid-induced pneumonia? Medical punditry spikes to fever pitch as Trump fights virus

By Nikhila Natarajan New York, Oct 5 : Steroid drug dexamethasone in US president Donald Trump’s treatment protocol has sparked intense speculation among doctors about the possibility that Trump may be battling Covid-induced pneumonia. It’s the latest hot take in wall to wall coverage of Trump’s health condition at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
According to lung and ICU doctor Vin Gupta at University of Washington, the experimental antibody cocktail Regeneron, in combination with Remdesivir and Dexamethasone suggests that Trump might be struggling with Covid-induced pneumonia. “What does his chest imaging show? The American people deserve basic information on their president”, Gupta tweeted.
In public comments, prominent US physicians are raising several red flags over the mismatch between the strong medical cocktail the US president Donald Trump is getting and the happy talk that the White House is putting out as Trump enters Day 4 of his hospitalisation for Covid-19.
Trump has started receiving dexamethasone, which is usually reserved for patients with severe Covid-19. A June 2020 study found that dexamethasone significantly cut chances that seriously ill patients died from the Coronavirus.
The World Health Organization recommends it is only given to patients with “severe and critical Covid-19.” Trapped in the confines of Walter Reed Hospital, US president Donald Trump, who is known to be a television binge watcher, is being pummelled with wave upon wave of medical punditry on his Covid-19 diagnosis and treatment – the precise coverage that he tried his best to distract from all these months since the pandemic first arrived in the US.