advertisment
Supported by
The president had quick access to first-class remedies and doctors who took a step forward in his understanding of the disease several months after the pandemic.
By Julie Bosman, Sarah Mervosh, Amy Harmon and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
CHICAGO – When Chanon DiCarlo’s husband and 3 young children fell ill with coronavirus, she treated them herself at her home in Chicago, and moved them from upstairs rooms to the basement where they were squatted consciously, and sometimes administered Tylenol for pain. The rare day they saw a doctor through Zoom.
“You couldn’t ask anyone to check his lungs, he wasn’t given an X-ray,” said DiCarlo, 46, who works in the concert industry. “No doctor has been able to measure my children’s heart rate or breathing. “
As a dynamic President Trump emerged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this week, he gave the impression on a White House balcony and proclaimed on Twitter that the public should not fear the coronavirus, many Americans saw few parallels among Trump’s experience. with the virus and theirs.
DiCarlo reflected on his difficulties in getting tested at the beginning of the pandemic, when few were all over the country.
A Brooklyn woman remembered the $4000 she charged for medication for her father, who eventually died of coronavirus.
A man in Texas said he understood why the president of the United States would have the most sensible doctors, but he still couldn’t help compare the position Trump is being treated with facilities where his 87-year-old mother had fallen ill.
“He’s getting worldwide care,” said Samuel Roy Quinn, whose mother died in a nursing home in April. “I’m not sure my mother has gained worldwide attention in this facility where she resided. “
Some Covid-19 survivors, including those who help Trump, have discovered what displeases their lack of compassion. Dale Grizzle, a retired space painter from Rydal, Georgia, said he understood the intent of the president’s message “Don’t Panic,” but didn’t care how he said it.
Mr Grizzle, 70, recalls the horror of feeling he was going to die in his own hospital for being coronavirused.
“If I had been him, I probably wouldn’t have said, “Don’t be afraid of the virus, ” Mr. Grizzle. “I probably would have said, ‘Dude, this can be very difficult for other people. . ‘ I would have said, ‘Even other people my age have a challenge with that under certain conditions. ‘I wouldn’t have minimized it much. ‘
When Trump made his televised return to the White House on Monday, Kerri Hill lay in bed at Galivants Ferry, South Carolina, and felt a glimmer of gratitude in another coronavirus patient who gave the impression of having trouble breathing.
But any similarity between her and the president temporarily faded.
“I was angry,” said Ms. Hill, 41, who stayed remote in her room for weeks while her husband left food at the door and her teenage son could only walk out the window. “They took that mask from him. It’s not 10 days, it’s not two weeks. If it’s positive, then you just exposed them all. “
After Ms. Hill became ill, which aggravated a pre-existing disease from the center, her doctors injected her with steroids and antibiotics. He didn’t have to undergo experimental treatment, he said, which he would have appreciated.
“Aren’t you afraid of Covid? Tell those who died, those who buried their circle of relatives, those who had empty seats at the dining room table, and all of us who are still suffering. “Hill said, he is about two hundred days ill-health and still has fluctuating fever and blood pressure. She plans to go to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November.
Nothing in the care presidents receive is typical.
The coronavirus is no different: from the beginning, Trump’s joy stands in strong contrast to that of Americans who have also contracted the virus. first-class medical treatment, but also from the moment of your illness. The virus was hit seven months after the onset of the pandemic, after the country had accumulated reserves and doctors took a step forward in their understanding of the disease.
After Trump’s close adviser, Hope Hicks, tested positive, the president and the first girl had to get tested and know its effects within hours, a delight shared by few Americans.
In March, febrile New Yorkers were wrapped in blankets in their apartments and told to assume they had the virus; some died there alone. In places like Phoenix and New Orleans this summer, other people waited for hours in queues around blocks and parking lots and then waited for their effects, 14 days or more.
In the chaotic corridors of hospitals on the Southern Texas border, there were not enough beds; for hours, patients waited in ambulances outside hospitals; once inside, they were left in reclining chairs and beds in the hallways.
Trump also had access to treatments for some of his constituents. One of its treatments, the steroid dexamethasone, is not widely used to treat coronavirus patients at the beginning of the pandemic and was not followed by some hospital officials in the United States. until this summer.
On Monday, Trump, 74, left Walter Reed, the army’s fitness center in Bethesda, Maryland, and said he felt bigger than he had in decades, fit to start the crusade soon.
The brief stay in the hospital and immediate recovery were nothing like the delight of Clement Chow, 39, a professor of human genetics in Salt Lake City.
“Unfortunate,” he described Trump’s scale in Walter Reed, recalling that when he entered the hospital he was out of breath. He administered high-speed oxygen for several days. There were no promising experimental therapies, just antibiotics.
Emotionally exhausting isolation. And itArray, remember, “the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced physically. “His recovery took weeks.
Prudencio Matías Mendoza’s brother Mariano died of coronavirus last July, and last week, Matías Mendoza, 38, followed Trump’s fight against the virus.
It supports some of the president’s policies. But he still couldn’t be angry at seeing Trump and other officials forget about the mandates of social estating and disguise themselves.
“The president is a god, ” said Matthias Mendoza, Everyone must do their part. It’s a virus that comes to kill”.
However, some left, keeping Trump’s positive grade.
Lupe Harpster of Flat Rock, Michigan, spent 28 days in a hospital in his war with the coronavirus, adding 10 days on a fan. Six months later, he still suffers from fatigue; a short motorcycle ride leaves her exhausted for the rest of the day.
But also with Trump other people should not allow the coronavirus to dominate their lives.
“I see many other people who are so scared and locked in their homes. They’re so critical of others,” said Harpster, 61. “I’m not going to live my life in fear. “
Julie Bosman reported from Chicago and Sarah Mervosh, Amy Harmon and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs from New York; John Eligon contributed to the reporting of Kansas City, Missouri, and Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York.
advertisment