US President Donald Trump sparked an angry backlash from the medical community Sunday with a protocol-breaking visit to his supporters outside the hospital where he is being treated for the highly-infectious, potentially deadly new coronavirus.
He was masked as he waved from inside his bulletproof vehicle during the short trip
Outside Walter Reed military medical center near Washington,
which appeared designed to take back the narrative on his improving
health after a weekend of muddled messaging from his doctors.
The last-minute limousine outing came with Trump’s doctors satisfied enough
about his progress to suggest the possibility of his being discharged on Monday.
But experts complained that the outing broke his own government’s
public health guidelines requiring patients to isolate while they are in treatment
and still shedding virus — and endangered his Secret Service protection.
But health experts took to the airwaves and social media to criticize the “stunt,”
which they said demonstrated that he had learned nothing at all.
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“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary
Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,”
said James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University.
“They might get sick.
They may die.
For political theater.
Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater.
This is insanity.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere said “appropriate” precautions had been
taken to protect Trump and his support staff, including protective gear.
“The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do,” he added.
But Zeke Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy
at the University of Pennsylvania and regular TV pundit, described the appearance as “shameful.”
“Making his Secret Service agents drive with a COVID-19 patient,
with windows up no less, put them needlessly at risk for infection.
And for what? A PR stunt,” he tweeted
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