Trump's Coronavirus Immunity Is Another Lie

Donald Trump makes a habit of getting other people to do his work for him. His supporters claim he's a genius for his tax avoidance scams, but he didn't actually do his own taxes. He hires guys (usually short ones wearing yarmulkes) to do his taxes. 

According to his own sister, Trump had someone else take the SATs to get him into Penn.

And Trump has a long history of getting other people to finance shaky projects, like his casinos, when he declared bankruptcy and left his investors holding the bag while he earned millions.

That's not smart. That's criminal.

Trump has been parading around the country after his bout with the coronavirus, claiming that he's immune even as the virus was still in his system, exposing everyone he came into contact with. 

And it's not even true that being infected with the coronavirus makes you immune: viruses mutate (which is why there's a new flu vaccine every year), and there are already numerous cases where people have been reinfected with the coronavirus.

Trump's idolators think he's got some kind of god-like immune system. Needing oxygen to breathe and being rushed to the hospital in a helicopter doesn't sound very god-like. But like everything with Trump it's a lie: he got someone else to do the work.

He announced his diagnosis early on Oct. 2, and a test did not pick up any antibodies in his blood, according to a report released by his physician, Dr. Sean Conley.

The lack of antibodies that early in the course of illness is not unusual. It can take from 10 days to three weeks for powerful antibodies to surface.

“If he had tested positive, then we would know for sure that he has his own antibodies,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

“Since he was antibody-negative, it is less likely but not ruled out,” he added. “He could have been in the early stage of generating his own antibodies.” (Dr. Barouch is an investigator for Regeneron’s trial of the cocktail for preventing coronavirus infections.)

On Oct. 2, Mr. Trump received eight grams of a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies made by Regeneron. These antibodies are infused into people — like those of Mr. Trump’s age, sex and weight — who may struggle to produce an immune response of their own.

A test on Oct. 5 confirmed the presence of the antibodies, according to Dr. Conley.

But Dr. Barouch noted that “the antibodies detected in the bloodstream are not his antibodies. They’re antibodies that were administered. Those antibodies will wane over time.”

“If you get the antibodies early on, and you either prevent or rapidly treat infections,” Dr. Barouch said, “then you probably will actually inhibit the generation of your own body’s antibodies.”

Mr. Trump was also treated with dexamethasone, a steroid that is known to suppress the immune system. And he received it much earlier in the course of his illness than usual. 

 

That means Trump is likely not immune to the coronavirus, and since he's taking steroids, he's more susceptible to being infected again.

Trump supporters, take note: the guy did not take hydroxychloroquine when he got infected, even though he kept hawking that as some kind of miracle treatment, nor did he inject bleach or ram a tube down his trachea to irradiate his lung tissue with UV. He did what the experts said to do, ignoring all the nonsense advice he spouted before he got hit by the virus because of his rank stupidity.

Also of concern: more than half of all coronavirus patients suffer long-term neurological effects from the disease, which means Trump's already tenuous grasp on sanity has a 50-50 chance of slipping even further.

Why would anyone trust this clown with their health, when he can't even protect himself, his staff, his visitors, the supporters at his rallies, his wife, or his son Barron?