The president of the United States finally contracted COVID, close to two years after his predecessor got it. Although the case appears to be a mild version from which he should recover quickly, and although he will receive the best medical treatment available, this second case of a president falling ill still raises some troubling concerns.
I interviewed then-President Trump in the fall of 2020 after he recovered from his infection, and I discovered that he had developed a case of COVID pneumonia with a low oxygen count, prompting hospitalization and the rapid use of monoclonal antibodies, steroids and the anti-viral drug Remdesivir. This was pre-vaccine, pre-Paxlovid treatments, but President Trump recovered quickly. When I spoke with him on camera a few days after his discharge from the hospital, he still was somewhat weak and seemed slightly breathless, but he soon recovered to full strength.
It is a totally different picture from what we are seeing with President Biden and his COVID infection, which was discovered with routine testing after he developed nasal congestion, a cough and fatigue.
For one thing, the Omicron subvariants of today are much more contagious and cause more of an upper respiratory problem, rather than burrowing deep in the lungs in the manner of the COVID subvariant which we saw with Trump in October 2020. Second, the buildup of immunity to Omicron across the country and around the world, combined with the immunity that vaccines have provided, have helped to make COVID less severe today.
Even though the latest Omicron subvariant, BA.5, is the most immune-evasive that we have seen thus far, it nevertheless is encountering a lot of immune resistance from prior infection and vaccines. This translates to a much lower percentage of people getting severely ill, and to fewer requiring hospitalization or dying.
Of course, the official case numbers don’t truly reflect this mildness because the vast majority of positive results are now discovered on rapid home tests, which are not reported to health officials in many instances.
This is why I expect President Biden to do well with COVID.
True, he is 79 years old. And, yes, he suffers from high cholesterol and atrial fibrillation (heart arrhythmia). But his reported symptoms are mild so far — cough, congestion, fatigue — and as long as he doesn’t develop worse symptoms, or go on to develop long COVID, he should recover fully over the next week or two. He is receiving the powerful anti-viral drug Paxlovid, which has been shown to decrease the risk of hospitalizations by up to 90 percent.
Yet, unfortunately, instead of the president’s illness being cited as a testament to the success of the vaccines and treatments, many observers are too quick to point a finger at their imperfections.
I was surprised to learn that the president did not receive the monoclonal antibody bebtelovimab, the Lilly drug that has been found to be successful against the Omicron subvariants. I also was surprised to learn that the blood thinner prescribed for his heart arrhythmia was temporarily stopped rather than simply decreased, although the risk of doing so over such a short period of time is very low.
And I am disturbed to think that the president’s illness might lead to further pressure for a return of mask or other health mandates, when the real lesson here is just the opposite.
Don’t get me wrong: The testing, prevention and treatment tools we have at the moment have worked to decrease severity and to make the virus more manageable — but they do not effectively decrease spread. A poorly worn cloth or surgical mask that the wearer takes on and off because of a mandate is not the answer to stopping the spread of this highly contagious subvariant. The Biden administration is unintentionally sending the public a message of learning to live with COVID by not enforcing strict restrictions even in their own White House. The president is shown to be working without a mask, having videos shot of him without a mask, while his wife, first lady Jill Biden, is not being isolated as a precaution and is going around with a simple surgical mask.
I do not condone any of these actions because they do carry some risk, but the larger message is clear: We have reached a “new normal” with COVID, a time beyond strict, rigid COVID restrictions that our leaders are not following themselves and, thus, cannot effectively ask others to follow.
Marc Siegel, M.D., is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is a Fox News medical correspondent and author of the new book, “COVID; the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science.”