Trump campaign managers:
Corey Lewandowski - Criminal charges
Paul Manafort - Criminal charges
Steve Bannon - Criminal charges
Kellyanne Conway - Covid
Brad Parscale - Criminal investigation
Bill Stepien - Covid
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In the hours leading up to the president’s announcement of a new coronavirus testing initiative last week in the Rose Garden, officials at the Center for Disease Control were left in the dark about the initiative’s actual details. Earlier in the day, Vice President Mike Pence and Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s coronavirus testing czar, had hosted a call with the nation’s governors, during which they said that the federal government planned to send states batches of Abbot BinaxNOW point of care tests, free of charge, with the hope that they use them for the reopening of schools.
But neither Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, nor CDC Director Robert Redfield were on the call. And when Trump ultimately unveiled the initiative at the Rose Garden, neither Redfield, Fauci nor Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, appeared alongside him. (Birx has been traveling across the country to work with colleges to slow community spread). Instead, the president turned to Pence, Giroir and Scott Atlas, an adviser to Trump on COVID-19 issues, to promote the new testing plan.
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Excuse me @matt. Are you accusing me of floating a conspiracy theory? This is an extremely legitimate question and given the volume of lies that have been put forward by Mr. Trump, it is perfectly conceivable that this is another one. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/
I’m amazed that you have ignored me every time I’ve reached out to you over the years, but decided to acknowledge me now only to say this.
No, I’m saying we don’t discuss conspiracies here. We discuss the news, what’s happened, and so forth. And since your question IS directly related to the second item on this list of misleading and false information related to Trump’s positive Covid result, I wanted to arrest any talk of the matter before it spiraled. That, in part, is how you maintain healthy online communities.
Aside from this not being true, if it were I don’t know why you’d expect or feel entitled to a response 100% of the time? I make myself extremely available to the wtf community, but there are limits to that. I don’t think I need to apologize for setting boundaries.
Actually, there were suspicions early, that he might be “trying something” to gain compassion, and avoid the next debates.
All this stemming from the fact that he can’t be trusted, on any subject.
By now, we know he really has C-19, and it seems serious, in his case, the lack of tweets is evidence enough. Lol.
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Plus KellyAnne
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His vote would change the ACB vote…3 R senators outside of Sen Murkowski and Collins and would make up the 5 votes needed to not confirm ACB.
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Trump’s doctors said it had been 72 hours since Trump’s diagnosis, which does not fit in with what we know. We were told of Trump’s illness late on Thursday/early Friday Washington DC time. That means Trump went to a fundraiser in New Jersey knowing he had Covid-19. They also kept flip-flopping oddly on whether or not he’s on oxygen.
At a Saturday morning press conference, President Trump’s medical team suggested that the President knew he tested positive for coronavirus earlier than has been previously reported. Dr. Sean Conley, Trump’s physician, said that we’re “72 hours into the diagnosis,” meaning the President could have test positive as early as Wednesday.
At a press conference, Trump’s medical team at Walter Reed said the president is fever-free and that they are “extremely happy” with the progress the president has made. But the team refused to answer key questions about when the president was first diagnosed, first symptomatic and whether he had received supplemental oxygen.
Adding to the confusion, a White House official said after the briefing that the doctor misspoke about the timing of the president’s diagnosis and treatment. The White House has not commented on the record about the doctor’s remarks and whether they contradict the timeline previously communicated to the public by Trump and the White House.
Trump spent the night at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he received the experimental drug remdesivir after experiencing mild coronavirus symptoms.
Here are some significant developments:
- Chris Christie, who helped Trump prepare for last week’s debate, said Saturday that he has tested positive for the virus.
- “Going welI, I think! Thank you to all. LOVE!!!” Trump tweeted from the hospital shortly before midnight. His physician said in a statement late Friday that “the President is doing very well” and “is not requiring any supplemental oxygen.”
- Kellyanne Conway, a former senior adviser to Trump, said Friday that she tested positive for the virus, just days after attending a Rose Garden event announcing Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. At least a half-dozen people who were at the event have confirmed infections, including Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and University of Notre Dame President John I. Jenkins.
- Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and top White House aide Hope Hicks have also tested positive for the virus.
- Trump has no public events scheduled on Saturday; he will spend several days at Walter Reed “out of an abundance of caution,” the White House said.
- Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, noting that both Lee and Tillis are members of the Judiciary Committee that is scheduled to hold a hearing on the Barrett nomination, asked that the confirmation hearing be delayed.
Source tells reporters Trump’s vitals are ‘very concerning’
A source has told CNN’s White House reporters that President Trump’s vitals in the last 24 hours have been “very concerning,” and that he is “still not on a clear path to full recovery.” CNN’s Jeremy Diamond and Kaitlan Collins have more.
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Here’s an AP report, from one of the reporters, Jonathan Lamire who spoke with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, as we heard “Off the Record.” But this report is far darker than the one T’s chief Dr. Conley spoke about…and I would tend to believe this one.
It’s all about keeping a positive spin on things for the T administration.
President Donald Trump went through a “very concerning” period Friday and the next 48 hours “will be critical” in his care as he battles the coronavirus at a hospital, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Saturday. Meadows’ comments contradicted the rosy assessment of Trump’s condition offered by his staff and doctors, who took pains not to reveal the president had received supplemental oxygen at the White House before his hospital admission.
“We’re still not on a clear path yet to a full recovery,” said a weary Meadows.
It was a dramatically different picture than the one painted by the White House staff since Trump revealed his diagnosis as well as by his doctors, who updated the public at a press conference at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
The briefing by Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley and other doctors raised more questions than it answered as Conley repeatedly refused to say whether the president ever needed supplemental oxygen, despite repeated questioning, and declined to discuss exactly when he fell ill. Conley also revealed that Trump began exhibiting “clinical indications” of COVID-19 on Thursday afternoon, earlier than previously known.
“Thursday no oxygen. None at this moment. And yesterday with the team, while we were all here, he was not on oxygen,” Conley said.
But according to a person familiar with Trump’s condition, Trump was administered oxygen at the White House on Friday before he was transported to the military hospital. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity,
Conley said Trump’s symptoms, including a cough and nasal congestion, “are now resolving and improving,” and said the president had been fever-free for 24 hours. But Trump also is taking aspirin, which lowers body temperature and could mask or mitigate that symptom.
“He’s in exceptionally good spirits,” said another doctor, Sean Dooley.
Trump is 74 years old and clinically obese, putting him at higher risk of serious complications from a virus that has infected more than 7 million people nationwide and killed more than 200,000 people in the U.S.
White House officials, including Meadows, had insisted Friday that Trump had only “mild symptoms” as they tried to project an image of normalcy.
“President Trump remains in good spirts, has mild symptoms and has been working throughout the day,” said press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. She said Trump had only been sent to Walter Reed as a precaution.
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Mark Meadows is walking back his more dire comments. So it sure looks like he has to voice the ‘party line.’
White House chief of staff says Trump is doing very well | Article [AMP] | Reuters
But just now Reuters also reports the ‘unidentified’ source as the next 48 hours are critical.
Trump’s COVID-19 symptoms ‘very concerning’, next 48 hours critical, source says | Reuters
So round and round they go…
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Trump Thought He’d Never Get It
The president and his entourage have known since February that COVID-19 is a serious disease. They haven’t acted that way.
Donald Trump has always thought of himself as above the rules. He has demonstrated this conviction throughout his life: in his business, in his personal behavior, and for almost four years as president of the United States. So we know what to expect from him. But even when Trump does what’s expected—which is generally the worst thing anyone can picture him doing—his actions or inactions can still astonish those Americans who are holding on to their sanity by the thinnest of threads in these insane times.
Trump’s cavalier conduct in the face of the coronavirus pandemic has shown that he imagines himself to be not only above the rules but above science itself, above knowledge, above medicine, immunology, and epidemiology. Trump has known since February that COVID-19 is a serious disease. Nonetheless, he and his staff have gone about their business publicly as if there were no pandemic, putting their friends and families, their colleagues, and by extension the American people in the worst kind of danger.
Even more astonishing is that he endangered himself as well. Last week, he spent days in close confines with Hope Hicks, whom he quickly found out was infected, and then bustled off to an event with donors during which he never told them he was at risk, though they came together for part of the time in an indoor dining room.
Perhaps he didn’t really believe that the virus could touch him. Perhaps Trump thought the pandemic was only for other people, suckers and losers.
Because he thinks he’s above the law and has always wriggled out of every uncomfortable or difficult responsibility, such as contractors’ fees and taking care of his young children, he behaved as if he were immune to COVID-19. After all, he’s Donald Trump, head of the internationally renowned Trump Organization, master of the universe, president of the United States. Possibly a superhuman, a very stable genius, a world-class individual. How could a measly virus disturb this Übermensch?
Since early Friday, when the White House announced that Trump had been diagnosed with COVID-19, everyone, even Trump, has known that Trump is not immune. The lesson for this president is that, distort as you will—lie, cheat, and undermine the country’s truth tellers—reality really is reality, and no one is immune to reality.
During the pandemic, I have not lived like the president. Instead of wearing a mask over my eyes, I’ve confronted the reality of the virus, and worn it where it needs to be worn.
Let’s see. Since March 11, I have not hugged anyone except my husband. When our sons, who are in their 20s, visit us, they get tested and endure brief quarantines, and we still keep six feet apart and don’t hug or kiss.
I don’t shake hands with anyone. Do you? I don’t sit next to people, except for my husband. When we see other people, which is rare, we sit more than six feet apart and outside only. When we walk through the neighborhood, we wear masks and stay more than six feet away from other pedestrians. Sometimes it’s hot out. We still wear masks. If we forget to put on a mask, we go back to get one. We don’t want to get sick, and we know the mask is our best protection.
More than this, though: We don’t want others to get sick. In our community, as in many other communities in the country where so many have been sickened by this virus, it would be socially embarrassing to not wear a mask. A mask protects not only us, but the people around us; not just the people we know, but strangers too. And by protecting those other people, we also protect ourselves. It’s pretty simple. You know all this, and I know all this. And the president and all the president’s men and women know all this.
We know about this disease and what it can do to a person. We know people who have had it and gotten very sick and survived, and we know people who have died. But we don’t just know about the virus because we personally know COVID-19 patients. We know about it because we’re open-eyed people living in the modern world, listening to scientists and health experts, keeping abreast of the latest news on the disease—making sure we have the best information possible.
The riskiest behavior I’ve engaged in since the pandemic began was to pick up my son from LAX on the Fourth of July. I was disease-free and had lived in quarantine since March. I didn’t want my son to take an Uber or taxicab with a stranger driving. So my son sat in the back passenger-side seat. We didn’t kiss hello. We wore masks. I drove 70 mph with all the windows open. My son had been tested in New York, and was negative. But for us, the way we live now, this still felt like risky behavior. All along the freeway, my son filmed fireworks going off on people’s private property, the explosions arcing over the road. Angelenos didn’t gather in crowds as usual for the displays, but somehow this version of the holiday was beautiful and singular and a very moving example of how Americans could celebrate separately but also together and simultaneously. It was the best Fourth of July I’ve ever experienced.
Because of the pandemic, I’ve given up a lot of the things I normally do, with the simple goal of keeping me and my family and friends and our neighborhood and city and country safe and healthy. We’re lucky, because both my husband and I can work from home, although that’s not always fun. It also hasn’t been fun to give up concerts, movies, travel, and so many other things we do every year. But it’s been worth it. Because this way, if I get sick, at least I’ll know I did everything I could to protect myself and to make sure that medical personnel are not being burdened with my care, while risking their own health, for frivolous reasons.
Like so many Americans, I wouldn’t want to add to a nurse’s viral load because I just hadn’t felt cool or free or fashionable wearing a mask. Why on earth should the leaders of this country not agree with me?
On Thursday, Senator Mike Lee, who the next day tested positive for COVID-19, attended a Judiciary Committee discussion on the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. He wasn’t wearing a mask. Incredibly, other senators were also maskless, Democrats and Republicans, not just when they were speaking but when they were sitting there breathing Lee’s droplets. Why? The only senator I saw wearing a mask was Chuck Grassley, 87, who spoke coherently and audibly right through the mask.
The positive tests among prominent Republicans may stem from Barrett’s nomination event. After the announcement on September 26 in the Rose Garden of the White House, the audience of about 100 mingled in the sun, unmasked, undistanced, rushing to embrace one another, hugging, shaking hands. The madcap full-body frolicking and intimacy seemed like an attempt to show how little all these people cared about the virus, how free they felt to violate all norms of the pandemic, how very liberated they were from fear of COVID-19. Around the country and around the world, people who’d been careful about their exposure to the virus were shocked as they watched this display of unconscionable insouciance. Yes, outdoor transmission is much less likely than indoor transmission—but the White House held indoor get-togethers for Barrett as well. And now at least eight of the attendees are infected.
In a video of the event, you can see Lee hug two people at the same time, and then former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who just announced that he too is positive for COVID-19, kiss and hug two people at the same time. When I watched the video, I thought about grandparents I know who haven’t yet been able to meet their new grandchildren because the virus prevents them from traveling; of people dying alone because family can’t come into hospitals to say goodbye; of all the health workers who’ve died or become very sick from COVID-19; of Nick Cordero, the 41-year-old Broadway actor who fell ill and had to have his leg amputated, then died anyway; and of all the people with essential jobs that forced them to work alongside others who have gotten sick and died.
Now Trump is sick. Ah, what a little bout of fever will do to a man’s view of things. Once he, with all his grandeur and invulnerability and Superman-like omnipotence, was threatened by this disease, he suddenly accepted the science about the virus. A day after testing positive, off he rushed to Walter Reed for the latest, most fabulous treatments science can offer. Surrounded by the best doctors and most careful nurses, he will be watched around the clock and his medications will be the best in the world. I understand this: He’s the president (though this one fact is the reality that actually beggars the imagination).
But still, after Trump has exhibited so much carelessness about the welfare of the citizens of the country he’s responsible for, you can’t help feeling angry at the perfection and efficiency of his treatment. The man who mocked masks and advised us to shoot bleach into our interiors receives the best medical treatment science can offer, while Americans languish and die in their sweaty beds.
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She knows her stuff…
COVID-19 at the White House - Contact Tracking - Peter James Walker | Tableau Public
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I am including this because it covers a lot of ground and links to articles, and parses out the arguments, the timelines and how to approach all the false fronts the WH/WH Doctor Conley/Mark Meadows/Trump are showing. Now we have all the details of the President’s condition and wondering by his eye droops and speech, was there hydroxychloroquine involved (NO, but T asked)…and how is he doing, will he survive? Or is it made-up ‘feel good’ stories.
Not necessary to remind us that all of it comes so close to the election, the potential filling of the Supreme Court spot…and so much more is at stake all of which has been exhausting and fraught with panic and WTFery.
Adding a bunch of excerpts from Brian Seltzer of Reliable Sources/CNN and Oliver Darcy/CNN
Recap - Also note @anon95374541 - he talks about what “on the record” is towards top, when describing AP’s going with naming Mark Meadows.
Link to Brian Stelter’s newsletter
Credibility concerns come to a head
If you’re experiencing deja vu right now, sensing that you’ve seen this all before, you are not alone.
This moment is definitely unique: A pandemic paralyzing normal life… A president hospitalized… A public unsure who or what to trust. But this moment is informed by months of years of deja vu context.
Questions about whether Donald Trump’s doctors are telling the whole truth? These questions pre-date his inauguration.
Concerns about the White House’s complete lack of credibility? Those concerns have been a daily feature since January 2017.
What should Americans believe?
Here is the lead of Saturday night’s big-picture story by CNN’s Maeve Reston and Gregory Krieg : “President Donald Trump said in a video Saturday evening that he’s ‘starting to feel good.’” His message was “just the latest in a string of contradictory and often misleading information about his diagnosis with Covid-19 and his condition since being transported to Walter Reed” on Friday.
Trump’s video was reassuring in so far as it showed him alive and well enough to speak on camera. The day had been consumed by questions about the president’s status, largely due to Dr. Sean Conley 's decision to paint an unrealistically rosy picture and evade basic questions at a late morning press conference. It felt like a WH press briefing – a TV show performed for the President. So people were right to be skeptical about the performance.
@anon95374541 here…Off the record explained. 
Minutes after the presser, a “source familiar with the president’s health” spoke with a small group of WH reporters, known as the “pool,” and made Trump’s condition sound anything but rosy. The NYT and The AP identified the source as WH chief of staff Mark Meadows . Other outlets refrained from naming the person, largely due to their preexisting agreements about the sourcing. Journalism ethics dictate that if you agree to protect a person’s identity, you generally can’t renege, though counter-arguments and exceptions abound. According to the AP, “we asked Meadows to go on record and he agreed.”
For the clearest chronicling of this issue, read the NYT’s story here…
Best case scenario
The best case scenario seems to be this: The president was much, much sicker than the White House admitted on Friday. His “blood oxygen level had dropped rapidly,” according to Meadows, and Trump was even given supplemental oxygen. He was eventually convinced to go to Walter Reed, despite his own reservations. There has been, as CNN’s Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins wrote, an “astonishing gap in Americans’ knowledge of their leader’s health.” Well-placed government officials have been kept in the dark too. There have been multiple failures on many levels. “Many even inside the White House and the wider administration are relying on news reports to glean information,” Liptak and Collins wrote.
The President’s doctors have employed every medical tool at their disposal to tamp down the virus. And as of Saturday evening, those efforts have worked and his condition has stabilized – perhaps even improved. In a Saturday night memo, Conley said Trump “continues to do well,” though is “not out of the woods.”
But again, that’s the best case scenario… and it’s still awfully troubling.
– Before Team Trump shared his I’m-doing-okay video, he apparently phoned Rudy Giuliani and dictated a statement that Rudy supplied to the NYPost’s Miranda Devine . “I’m watching this coverage,” Trump said… (NYPost)
– One of the NYT’s Sunday headlines: “A White House Long in Denial Confronts Reality” (NYT)
– Jonathan Swan’s latest story is headlined “Covering a cover-up in real time.” Swan writes that even WH and Trump campaign officials “have little confidence in what they are being told…” (Axios)
We heard two distinct stories on Saturday about the Trump covid timeline. Let’s take them one by one.
MIDDAY WEDNESDAY DIAGNOSIS: If what Dr. Sean Conley said out loud at the press conference is true, that the president was “72 hours into the diagnosis” as of midday Saturday, it means that the president held a fundraiser and a rally in Minnesota on Wednesday, and a fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday, while knowing he was sick. The timeline is staggering.
THURSDAY EVENING DIAGNOSIS: If what Conley said in his attempt at clean-up is true, and the president was diagnosed on Thursday evening, the timeline still raises questions. What time Thursday was he diagnosed? When he called into Sean Hannity 's show, he claimed not to know the results of his Covid test. Are we supposed to believe that he learned about his diagnosis between 9:50pm and 12:54am? Is that what Conley meant by “Thursday evening?”
Three mistakes in a single statement
On Saturday, Conley shredded whatever credibility he had left. He was evasive at the press conference. He left more questions than answers. And then, in an attempt at clean-up, he issued a corrective statement that contained three mistakes. He misspelled Regeneron, he misnamed the antibody treatment, and he took the blame for a misstatement that was actually attributed to one of the other doctors on Trump’s medical team. Details here…
Can we just be really honest with each other for a second? If my doctor made this many mistakes, I’d fire him. I’d try to find another doctor. Wouldn’t you?
What does Trump want his message to be?
This tweet from > NYU professor Jay Rosen stood out to me…
"If I’m a White House reporter, my hypothesis is: They think they can still pull a win out of this. The win is, ‘See? COVID is no big deal. The president had the sniffles and beat it in a few days.’ Working backwards from a fantasy outcome, they are struggling to find the script. "
The big, big picture
The AP’s Steve Peoples wrote: “The closing days of the presidential campaign were already dominated by the worst public health crisis in a century, millions of jobless Americans, a reckoning on civil rights, the death of a Supreme Court justice and uncertainty about President Donald Trump’s willingness to accept the election outcome. And that was before the president woke up in a military hospital on Saturday…”
Dan Balz 's analysis for WaPo made the same point, and then added: Trump’s illness “adds to the strain of a nation that never seems to have a minute to turn away from misery or controversy or both, never has a chance to collect its breath, never has a week or a day to fully enjoy life as it existed when the year began. Events — some of them once-in-decades or once-in-a-century occurrences — now play out all in unison. There is no respite . If one ebbs another flows.”
These are the articles above
Colliding crises shake already chaotic campaign's last month
One month before Election Day and with ballots already being cast in some states, there are few parallels in American history to such a stunning collision of crises in the late stage of a campaign. But beneath the volatility, the broad contours of the 2020 contest are remarkably stable.
The election began as, and remains, a referendum on Trump’s turbulent presidency.
Events — some of them once-in-decades or once-in-a-century occurrences — now play out all in unison. There is no respite. If one ebbs another flows. People talk about an October surprise in presidential campaign years. The year has been a series of October surprises, some titanic in scope, others smaller but disruptive in their own way.
What’s “broken” exactly?
“The virus slams into a broken Washington” was the title of this analysis piece by Politico’s Jake Sherman . “Let’s not mince words: Washington has been plunged into a crisis of historic proportions, frozen by a disease it is both unwilling and unable to control,” he wrote. But many critics said Sherman WAS mincing words. As CNN’s John Harwood commented, “it is not really ‘Washington’ that is broken.” It is “very clear that the locus of dysfunction is Trump WH and Republican Party that sustains/protects/enables that dysfunction.”
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Fri, October 2, 2020, 9:25 AM PDT
Just when we thought things here on Planet Contagion couldn’t get any more chaotic, President Donald Trump has tested positive to the dreaded virus. As a doctor, I of course wish a speedy recovery for anyone infected with COVID-19—Trump is said to have only “mild symptoms,” like a cold—just as I worry about those at high risk. And Trump is at high risk. Read on to find why his diagnosis might be bad news for his health, and to get through this pandemic at your healthiest, don’t miss these Sure Signs You’ve Already Had Coronavirus.
1 He’s Male
Many studies have reported males are more at risk of a poor COVID outcome than females—the risk for males is around twice the risk for females. The infection fatality ratio (IFR) for men over 80 is 11.6%, compared to 4.6% for women, according to Nature . This seems to be due to biological differences in the male and female immune system.
2 He’s Older
The 64-74-year old age group are five times more likely to be admitted to hospital with COVID infection, and 90 times more likely to die, than those aged 18-29, per the CDC. For every 1,000 people admitted to hospital with COVID in their mid-70s, 116 will die, per Nature .
RELATED: Dr. Fauci Says You’re Most Likely to Catch COVID Here
3 He’s Obese
A recent review of the medical literature in Obesity Reviews , which included 1,733 studies and 399,461 participants, concluded that people who are obese, are 113% more likely than those of normal weight, to be admitted to hospital with COVID, 74% more likely to end up in ITU, and 48% more likely to die.
There are many reasons why obesity increases the risk of a poor COVID outcome.
- Obesity causes chronic inflammation, impairs the immune response, and increases the risk of a cytokine storm—the cause of adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
- Obesity is associated with impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance and type-diabetes.
- Excess fat sits under the diaphragm and in the chest wall, making it more difficult to breathe in and out.
- Too much fat is “lipotoxic”—fat literally poisons other organs such as the heart, kidneys, and liver.
- Obesity increases the risk of venous thromboembolism.
4 He’s American
America and Brazil have the highest death rates from COVID across the globe.
A recent statistical reanalysis of data concluded that deaths in Europe were, in fact, 28% lower than those in America. Economists believe that if this excess mortality had been prevented, 57,800 American lives could have been saved. The authors point out that the U.S. has 4% of the world’s population but is responsible for 21% of global COVID infections and deaths.
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