ont
to the WH steps really knocked him out. It was clear that he was running an uncomfortable oxygen deficit, trying desperately to avoid having to sit do wn and breathe hard while he posed for the photo op. I saw him gasping for air with increasingly deep breaths, that last gasp was a really mighty whol e chest heave and then they cut off the video. Trump is a very sick man. My best guess is that his lung capacity is less than 50%, and probably much l ower. Some of this will be permanent and some will be recovered.
t is difficult to assess without extensive testing.
Loss of lung capacity can be due to odema (build up of fluid in the lung), which is reversible. Covid-19 can rip up a lot of the surface of the lung, which is harder to fix.
l.
's clearly willing to put his own life at risk in the hope of looking elect able (at least to his supporters).
actually make a person well. Someone needs to tell Trump that.
Fat chance that he'd pay any attention, and fat chance that he needs to be told. Pretending to be well takes a lot of effort.
orld class" health care doesn't mean it's any good, so small comfort there.
ction. Remdesivir is supposed to slow down the rate of viral replication, b ut it certainly doesn't stop it. Doctors can do quite a bit to keep people with severe infections alive, but essentially they are just buying time for the immune system to do its work.
ells in seriously ill people. The cell count being as low as 10% of the AID S threshold. Medically unrelated to AIDS as it seems, it should give you a hint of the near total loss of immune function. The patient is unsalvageabl e at that point- just guessing.
Not a useful observation. Being sick doesn't do you any good at all, and th e sicker you are, the harder it is for you to stay alive long enough for yo ur immune system to beat the infection (particularly when your immune syste m is competing for increasingly scarce resources).