[News] Trump update spurs more questions than answers, again

[S e u o n g]

President Donald Trump's physician, Navy Cmdr Dr. Sean Conley, held a second medical briefing that again raised more questions than answers about the President's condition.

In another jarring news conference on Sunday, Trump's doctors said that even though the President has had at least two concerning drops in oxygen levels, they are hoping he could be discharged as early as tomorrow from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Conley and other doctors involved in the President's care offered some more information about the President's condition - but there were still significant gaps that made it hard to decipher the full picture.
Conley failed to answer basic questions about the President's condition and admitted that he had omitted those alarming drops in the President's oxygen levels during a news conference Saturday because he wanted to "reflect the upbeat attitude" that the team and the President had about his condition and didn't want "to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction."
Conley acknowledged that his evasive answers "came off that we were trying to hide something" but said that "wasn't necessarily true," adding that the President is "doing really well" and is responding to treatment.
During the briefing Sunday, Conley acknowledged that the President has experienced "two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation" and said the team debated the reasons for that and whether to intervene. He said the President was given supplemental oxygen and has also been treated with the steroid dexamethasone, and his current blood oxygen level is 98%.

But Conley refused to say how low the President's blood oxygen levels had dropped. When asked if they had dropped below 90, he replied, "We don't have any recordings here of that." Pressed again on whether they had dropped below 90, Conley said the President's blood oxygen levels didn't get down into "the low 80s." 

He offered no detail about what X-rays or CT scans have shown about whether there has been any damage to the President's lungs.
"There's some expected findings, but nothing of any major clinical concern," Conley said, not explaining whether they were expected findings in a normal patient or a Covid-19 patient.
Some seven months into a pandemic that has killed more than 209,000 Americans, the nation is now facing a grave governing crisis with its commander in chief hospitalized - his condition hinging on his progress over the coming days - as the White House events of the past week serve as a textbook example of how not to handle a deadly virus.
Late Saturday night, the public learned new details about why Trump was airlifted to the hospital Friday, when chief of staff Mark Meadows said during an interview with Fox News that Trump had a fever on Friday morning and his oxygen level had "dropped rapidly." Meadows added that Trump has made "unbelievable improvements from yesterday morning."
A memo from Trump's physician earlier Saturday night said that Trump had "made substantial progress" since his diagnosis but "is not yet out of the woods."

Speaking from a White House that already has a huge credibility problem with the public, Meadows' statement capped a 24-hour period that served as a master class in opacity and contradiction that raised major questions about the President's health - and renewed questions about this administration's ability to tell the truth.
Trump has been watching and critiquing coverage of his hospitalization from the presidential suite at Walter Reed and has been agitated at what he claims are exaggerated descriptions of his condition, people familiar with the matter said.
Those people told CNN that Trump seemed particularly upset when he saw a quote saying he was displaying "concerning" symptoms on Friday attributed to a person familiar with his health but later assigned by the New York Times and Associated Press to Meadows.
The comment about the President's vitals hinted that his condition was more worrisome than his doctors let on. But the President's aversion to appearing weak and sick is now what is driving the effort to project resolve, including a video he tweeted from Walter Reed on Saturday, the photos released by the White House of him working and the multiple accounts of phone calls where he sounded strong by his allies and family members.
For much of this year, Trump has spun an alternate reality about the dangers of coronavirus - disputing science and the efficacy of masks, downplaying the risks to the American people, and making false statements about how 99% of coronavirus cases in America are "totally harmless "or that the virus" affects virtually nobody. "
He encouraged his aides and advisers to live in that dangerous fantasy land, pushing his luck to the limits as late as this past week when he again recklessly gathered thousands of unmasked Americans at his political rallies and packed the top officials in government into a Rose Garden ceremony for his Supreme Court nominee. All the while, White House officials embraced the fallacy that administering rapid coronavirus tests frequently at the White House could provide a shield of immunity.
The President's construct crumbled Friday when he was airlifted to Walter Reed after contracting the virus, while many aides, advisers and allies were testing positive for Covid-19 after interacting with him over the past week.
The White House seemed to be continuing to downplay concerns about the severity of the virus Saturday morning when the President's physician, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley, gave a news conference at Walter Reed where he described the President as upbeat and feeling good, without revealing any of the alarming developments with his oxygen levels the day before.