I&I Editorial
Almost as soon as President Donald Trump announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19, the left erupted in cheers, stopping only to suggest he was faking it to get out of future debates.
Pundits everywhere speculated on the impact of Trump’s illness on the presidential race, with most of the comments along the lines of: “Will Trump’s presidency be a casualty of COVID-19?”
There’s another possibility. That this turn of events will not only benefit Trump but could help snap the country out of its COVID-mania, which treats every case as a death sentence.
Here’s why.
In all likelihood, Trump will recover just fine. “Over the past 24 hours, the president has continued to improve,” his physician, Dr. Sean Conley, said Monday.
Trump’s return to the White House after suffering what, by all indications, were not terribly serious health effects, will let him boast that he beat COVID-19.
He will also be able to claim that he was right not to hide in the basement, or act like a scared rabbit when he’s out in public, like a certain Democratic presidential candidate. The contrast is not going to help Joe Biden’s campaign.
More importantly, it will be an opportunity for Trump to counter all the scaremongering that Biden and his army of sycophants in the press are engaged in. They want to keep the public in a state of panic about the coronavirus because they think it’s hurting Trump’s reelection chances. So they regard every coronavirus infection as a terminal case and ignore any fact that gets in the way of their doom-and-gloom narrative.
Yes, a lot of people have died with COVID-19. But as we’ve reported here many times, the death count “from” COVID-19 is almost certainly exaggerated, because the Centers for Disease Control is counting every death with COVID-19. And even based on the CDC’s counting method, the trend line is moving in the right direction.
Trump could use his own recovery to point out that — even accepting that more than 200,000 have died from COVID-19 — the data clearly show that the vast majority of the population has nothing to worry about from this disease .
That’s because the risk of dying from it is almost entirely among the aged and those with other serious health problems.
According to the CDC, 57% of the deaths are among those 75 and older. (Trump is 74.)
In Trump’s age group, the case fatality rate is 5.4%, according to the CDC. But the risk falls off the cliff among those under age 70. It’s 0.5% for those 50-69, 0.02% for those 20-29, and 0.003% for those 19 and younger.
What’s more, CDC data show that 94% of those who died from COVID-19 had other serious health problems that contributed to their deaths. In only 6% of deaths was virus listed as the only cause of death.
Nearly half of those who died, for example, also had influenza and pneumonia; 34% suffered respiratory failure; one-fifth had hypertension.
Not only that, but those who died from COVID-19 had, on average, almost three of the different health problems CDC names as contributing to deaths, a review of CDC data shows.
(By the way, while Trump is overweight, obesity has been a contributing factor in only 3.7% of COVID-19 deaths.)
That’s not to dismiss these deaths as insignificant. Not at all. But the data clearly show that the risk of the disease is almost entirely isolated among the very sick and very old. That information isn’t getting out. Trump could force it into the public.
The fact that these sorts of data aren’t common knowledge has everything to do with the biased coverage from the press. After all, any good news regarding the virus might benefit Trump, so it must be avoided.
Of course, Trump could take a turn for the worse. We hope that doesn’t happen. No one should want the president to fall gravely ill.
Our hope is that he has a speedy recovery, gets back on the campaign trail and, as a result, sets an example for the country that we can stop panicking about COVID-19 and get back to some semblance of normalcy.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I think there are two additional ways the break aided President Trump. First, he got to take a few days rest, which he would not have otherwise done, going into the last 4 weeks of the election. Second, it demonstrates that this disease is treatable and that effective treatments are available to expedite a rapid recovery. Somehow the mainline media and democrat governors seem too think the disease is untreatable. The quick recovery of an elderly, slightly overweight, man, demonstrates that he is correct. The lock downs must end.
“No one should want the president to fall gravely ill.”
Maybe you’ve missed the reactions of the demonic left? Evil is in their DNA.
This is a positive for the Trump campaign and America in general. It proves it is not a death knell disease but a manageable flu. The back breaker will be if the Biden campaign gets it. They claim they are following every guideline diligently, if they get it then their entire argument for all this nonsense goes out the window.
The CDC came out in their ever confusing way, and said the virus is airborne and can live in the air for 24-36 hours. They also said the “6′ social distancing” is fairly useless. If someone coughs or sneezes in their t-shirt or $.99 mask the spread spray can be well over 20′.
Herd immunity and therapeutics are the answer not lockdowns and waiting on vaccines.
This piece is right on target. And the left is now mourning his recovery.
I think it will kill Trump,and he thinks so too. His life is over: The revelations of his phony millions and a lifetime of lies are catching up to him. Unable to face humiliation, he wants to become a martyr instead, to Hubris and Ignorance.
Keep thinking George. I think that YOUR hate for Trump is all you’ve got. Hope you can get over that disease.
Omg 😂 what a fantasy world you live in. You should work a flying unicorn in there somewhere.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well. The dogma live loudly within you.
Less like dog-ma, and more like dog squeeze.
It’s certainly not good news for anyone else with Covid. Here’s why: Nobody else is going to receive the treatments and medications given to the uber-privileged trump.
THERE’S A GREAT BIG RUMBLING UNDERGROUND
After seismologists report ominous mini-quakes in the Bay Area, President Trump orders the evacuation of San Francisco and Oakland. Joe Biden and the media denounce it as “hysterical, racist, homophobic fearmongering,” and Nancy Pelosi on video bemoans the damage to the Frisco restaurant district. Chuck Schumer accuses Trump of autocratic “overreaction.”
The President forms a Seismological Task Force to advise him, but sadly many of them are killed on TV a month later when the sudden, volcanic, “Golden Gate” mega-eruption, surpassing Krakatoa, buries much of California in ash, lava, and toxic fumes. Millions die. The state requests and promptly receives emergency Federal aid, while the Democrat leadership and media, pivoting helpfully as always, condemn the President for acting too little too late, “having no plan,” and being “anti-science.” An enormous relief package passes Congress, after a Democrat provisions for transgender studies grants and federally-funded, late-term abortions are finally removed.
In the continuing crisis, liberal and social media outlets propagate theories accusing the President of ignoring forewarnings of the eruption (to punish California for voting for Clinton), of deceiving the public about the dangers of pyroclastic flows (“Trump Lied, California Nursing Home Patients On Chinese Ventilators Died”), and of allowing fracking in nearby North Dakota that, according to the New York Times, set off the eruption (“Fracking Kills” T-shirts and buttons go on sale the very day the article appears). Innumerable tweeters claim he told burn victims to drink carbon tetrachloride and vilify him as “the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler” (apparently they forgot about Mao).
Fortunately, all this gloom-and-doom lunacy stopped in the run-up to the November election. (Okay, I made that part up.)
I think that President Trump, the ringmaster of the unmasked Oval Office circus that brought the COVID contagion to the White House, will fare poorly once the infection subsides. He performed inefficiently from the get-go with respect to this novel disease, from the interminable news conferences in which he stood in the spotlight uttering false statements about bleach and an anti-malarial drug with no proven efficacy in this arena to his refusal to mask up when out-and-about. As naked fabulists do, he thinks he is fully clad. A majority or plurality of voters will disabuse him of his delusions on Election Day.
“Nearly half of those who died, for example, also had … pneumonia; 34% suffered respiratory failure” … Since being sick with COVID-19 for a couple of weeks could *result* in pneumonia or respiratory failure, it would be useful to know if those “who died” had pneumonia or respiratory failure *before * they became infected with SARS-CoV-2.