Impressions of today's Walter Reed presser:

a) Conley's mea culpa: “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude of the team. Didn’t want to give any information that would steer the course of his illness.” Trump's fingerprints.

But even so, today was only slightly better. (1/8)

b/ Biggest news is that T had 2 episodes of hypoxia (down to 93-94% O2 saturation), & Conley evaded whether sat was ever <90. "Never in low 80s" is all he offered.

c/ Re: Chest CT: "There were some expected findings but nothing of concern." What the hell does that mean?...(2/8)
...To be clear, the "expected findings" on a chest CT is NORMAL. If it was normal, he should say that. Anything else should have been described.

(The only semi-benign interpretation would be if the prez has a known chronic finding – like a benign nodule – that was seen)...(3/8)
... But it seems far likelier that they found evidence of pneumonia or other manifestations of Covid lung involvement or inflammation, which is serious and raises the level of concern and risk. (4/8)
d/ They pulled trigger & started dexamethasone. So they were clearly concerned. Given documented low O2, dex definitely was indicated.

e/ Said they're starting to plan for possible discharge, as early as tomorrow. Even w/ WH's medical capacity, that seems like an awful call. 5/8
f/ Yes, they could give his last doses of IV remdesivir in WH, but still risky to discharge. In RECOVERY trial (which proved value of dexamethasone), mortality rate in TREATMENT group for pts requiring O2 was 23.3% (vs. 26.2% in usual care). A nearly 1-in-4 risk of death. (6/8)
g/ Finally, most tellingly: when T was hypoxic, they tried to put him on O2. "He was adamant he didn't need oxygen." In my 35 years of practice, I've never seen a pt refuse oxygen. It's crazy, & illustrates who is running the show, which may well be scariest thing I heard. (7/8)
Bottom line: it seems like Trump is stable, but remains at high risk, given transient hypoxemia, some findings on chest imaging. The happy talk and evasions are clearly at Trump's direction, putting the docs in a terrible position. No way he's ready for discharge tomorrow. (8/8)

More from Trump

This is mostly right but strikes me as it needing said that I don't think the left or the intelligentsia have the slightest idea how low institutional trust in anything coming from a left mouthpiece is now. Except in-network, the best heuristic is "the opposite of what they said"


If you look at the situation from a predictive models perspective instead of the more rigorous and appropriate (under normal circumstances) "prove your case or gtfo" perspective, trusting the opposite of whatever the left side says has an AMAZING track record, as we know it.

Literally, the best heuristic most people have right now, in terms of how often it gets things right versus *completely* wrong, is "whatever CNN, the NYT, public health officials, and the Democrats said... yeah, the opposite." That is, they're wrong WAY outside of statistics.

They're also not just wrong. They're *completely* wrong, backwards, often transparently covering something up that they don't want known or refuse to believe. This isn't just a legitimation crisis because there's a heuristic: whatever the official left narrative is, is wrong.

There are a few reasons why such a heuristic would be more predictive than not. One of those is conspiracy, and another is mass hysteria with ideological capture. We know at least one of those is happening and have rather strong evidence both are. That makes conspiracy reasonable

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