Trump and Melania test positive for COVID-19

Occam’s Razor: It could be 7-dimensional chess. It could also be because they lie more than they breathe, and they’re too stupid to foresee the consequences of their lies, and they’ve already told so many lies they can’t keep them straight.

Seriously, anyone who cannot sit down and wrap their heads around the fact that Team Trump lies about everything, is not adequately equipped to assess this situation The compulsive lying is the first axiom that must be fully grasped to understand the rest of it.

Yup. They may have taken the view that the availability of the new monoclonal Ab treatment tipped the balance on the benefit/harm equation. And it may just have been a poor decision to give him dex, of course. The benefit for patients on supplemental oxygen only in that study was small.

Trump’s doctor is an osteopath IIRC. That doesn’t mean he’s automatically a stupid and terrible doctor, but it means he’s had less rigorous training and is less oriented to the more scientific aspects of medical care.

Of course, stupid and terrible seems to be a requirement to join Team Trump, so who knows.

He also may be completely full of shit. I’m not sure any reputable physician would want a self-destructive, infamous patient who doesn’t really seem to care about his or anyone else’s health.

They didn’t specify HOW he’d leave … in a box may be their expectation?

Yes, it was a bad idea to say this. They are in disarray.

Again with this osteopath crap?

He may be an idiot. I suspect he’s not the best. But not for that reason

My take: in his eyes we aren’t important enough to warrant spending time to construct good lies. Any shoddy, easily disproven falsehood will do. If you don’t want to play along, he’ll claim he never said it. Or he’ll call you a name. Or he’ll accuse you of liberal bias. Whatever. Here’s a check…if it bounces I’ll write you another.

Or he bullied them into giving it to him so he would look strong etc. I keep thinking that doctors may just say, “I won’t give you that treatment,” they’ll be fired and he’ll get someone who will. Look at the impeachment: Mitt Romney was the only one who stood against him because it was suicide to do otherwise. These career military doctors aren’t bulletproof either.

And the cost of dexamethasone is pennies, so it’s not like it is being withheld from the average COVID patient because of price; if it worked for minor cases, it would be used in minor cases.

This is not correct. In the U.S. a doctor with an “Osteopathic Medicine” credential is a regular doctor qualified in science-based medicine with an oddly anachronostic label, he is not “an osteopath”.

Just not true. They’ve had the same training as MDs and the same science.

Trump’s also the Commander-in-Chief. The doctor may not be able to disobey an order given to him as an officer.

It think it’s unfair to label it crap. It’s crazy that this totally misleading terminology is still used. Why do genuine doctors want this label? It’s hardly unreasonable for someone unfamiliary with the history to assume that someone with a qualification in “Osteopathic Medicine” is a practitioner of the pseudoscience of osteopathy, why would anyone expect anything else?

That’s a rather disturbing statement. Why should an important and an unimportant case merit different treatment?

It’s a regular sized Sharpie. Trump’s tiny hands make it look giant.

Dexamethasone works almost instantly, according to the many accounts of mountaineering I’ve read. Could it have been given to him to enable him to pose for photos without O2 tanks and masks?

Also, an oxygen mask would have obviated the need to wear a regular mask. So they take off the oxygen mask for a couple of photos and pop the O2 mask right back on again. Putting a regular face mask on him wouldn’t have helped the “See? He’s FINE!” propaganda.

They spend less time in academically-oriented residencies in favor of practical ones, they do less research, there are much fewer osteopaths in dual PhD programs than MD’s.

Plus there’s the basic eyebrow-raiser that osteopathy started out as a bullshit “manipulation” specialty, just like chiropractic, that was later retrofitted to be more mainstream-palatable. But they still label themselves with that useless term that doesn’t denote anything except that the discipline began its life as quackery.

Sure they claim an emphasis on “holistic” medicine. So do chiropractors, so does my sister-in-law flogging her vitamins and essential oils.

Those photos are definitely staged. You’d have to ignore a lot to think otherwise.

Does exif data always show when the pictures were taken, or could it be when they were transmitted to the press?

They seem more disorganized and panicky than I would expect from someone doing well.

Are you confusing osteopaths with naturopaths? I’ve had a couple of osteopaths as my primary care docs. There’s nothing “holistic” about their approach to medicine.

When the pictures are taken along with other data.

The metadata tags defined in the Exif standard cover a broad spectrum:

  • Date and time information. Digital cameras will record the current date and time and save this in the metadata.
  • Camera settings. This includes static information such as the camera model and make, and information that varies with each image such as orientation (rotation), aperture, shutter speed, focal length, metering mode, and ISO speed information.
  • A thumbnail for previewing the picture on the camera’s LCD screen, in file managers, or in photo manipulation software.
  • Descriptions
  • Copyright information.