How the Coronavirus Got to Donald Trump
Covid-19’s path through the president’s world is an epidemiological mystery. We know why it spread, but not if it spread via a single infectious event.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP announced late Thursday night that he and his wife, Melania, have Covid-19. Several other people with connections to the presidency all got Covid-19 at about the same time, and that feels, intuitively, like a mystery. It should mean something—and not only for all those people’s mask-avoiding, crowd-embracing, pandemic-be-damneding behavior—but for the virus itself and how it is transmitted from person to person.
The question is, whodunnit? Or at least, how? How did the most powerful, most protected person on earth get infected with a pandemic disease that has killed over a million humans?
Epidemiologically, this could have been an example of the classic “household spread,” in which one person gives the disease to people they live with. Or maybe it was “community spread,” among people in casual contact—which has allowed the virus to bounce from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, nation to nation. Or was there a super-spreading event, a perfect-storm combination of conditions that make transmission more likely and one person who is somehow excellent at transmitting the disease?
Scientists increasingly think Covid-19’s main mode of transmission is as aerosols, infinitesimal blebs of virus-containing snot borne aloft on ever-present, gentle air currents. Come into contact with enough of that ill wind—for example you’re caught in a room full of it, or spend too much time too close to someone giving off those particles—and you get the disease. But no one knows how much is too much, or who is more likely to get infected, or to be more infectious. The virus spreads as an invisible vapor, but knowledge about it seems perpetually obscured by fog. It’s never easy to see what’s going on. And the case of the pandemic president hasn’t cleared it up. Like, at all.
The news has moved fast. It was only Thursday morning that Bloomberg reported that Trump’s close aide Hope Hicks was infected with Covid-19; she had traveled with the president to his debate with election opponent Joe Biden on Tuesday and to a large outdoor rally. The president suggested that Hicks had caught the disease from “people from the military and law enforcement” who keep wanting to hug him and his team. Hicks had been tested after showing symptoms; it turned out the president was symptomatic too. Hours later he was tested, and both he and his wife were positive. A day later, the president was helicoptered to Walter Reed Medical Center; his drug regimen includes a still-experimental antibody therapy.
So for a while it was easy to think that Hicks had been the vector. Maybe.
But perhaps the trickiest thing about Covid-19 is that between the time a person gets infected and when they start showing symptoms, they can still pass the virus along to others.
That’s called the incubation period, and it can be as short as two days or as long as two weeks. “There were many moments during the last week when Trump’s infection could have occurred,” says Helen Jenkins, an epidemiologist at Boston University. “You can try to think carefully about: What’s the incubation period, the time from exposure to symptoms? There are distributions around these time periods, so you could try and get a sense of who may have infected whom and when infection may have happened. But given that they were together several times over the past few days, it would be difficult to pinpoint.”
In fact, Covid-19’s incubation period probably means that the president and his wife could have been infectious at the Cleveland debate with Biden. The former vice president has announced that he and his wife have tested negative for the disease, but, again, there’s that incubation period to worry about. Biden and the president were standing pretty close together. The president was bombastic, and yelling transmits viral particles better than speaking quietly. “It’s too early to say they’re in the clear,” says Tara Smith, an epidemiologist and infectious disease researcher at Ohio’s Kent State University.
Still: It’s probably not simple household spread. For one thing, all these people don’t actually live together. “I think it’s definitely not a classic case of household spread because it’s not a classic household,” says William Hanage, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. “The White House is a big house.” On Friday afternoon the news shifted, and the evidence against household spread got stronger. Utah senator Mike Lee announced that he, too, was positive for Covid-19. So did John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame University. So did Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel. If you are interested and want to read more about this article you are praised to click here.
Studies Begin to Untangle Obesity’s Role in Covid-19
People with extra weight may struggle to mount a robust immune response to the coronavirus — and may respond poorly to a vaccine.
In early April, Edna McCloud woke up to find her hands tied to her hospital bed.
She had spent the past four days on a ventilator in a hospital in St. Louis County, Mo., thrashing and kicking under sedation as she battled a severe case of Covid-19.
“They told me, ‘You were a real fighter down there,’” recalled Ms. McCloud, a 68-year-old African-American retiree with a history of diabetes and heart problems. She weighed close to 300 pounds when she caught the coronavirus, which ravaged her lungs and kidneys. Nearly six months later, she feels proud to have pulled through the worst. “They said people with the conditions I have, normally, this goes the other way,” she said.
As rates of obesity continue to climb in the United States, its role in Covid-19 is a thorny scientific question. A flurry of recent studies has shown that people with extra weight are more susceptible than others to severe bouts of disease. And experiments in animals and human cells have demonstrated how excess fat can disrupt the immune system.
But the relationship between obesity and Covid-19 is complex, and many mysteries remain. Excess weight tends to go hand in hand with other medical conditions, like high blood pressure and diabetes, which may by themselves make it harder to fight Covid-19.
Obesity also disproportionately affects people who identify as Black or Latino — groups at much higher risk than others of contracting and dying from Covid-19, in large part because of exposure at their workplaces, limited access to medical care and other inequities tied to systemic racism.And people with extra weight must grapple with persistent stigma about their appearance and health, even from doctors, further imperiling their prognosis. Regarding obesity’s effects on infectious disease, she said, “We are still learning, but it’s not difficult to understand how the body can become overwhelmed". If you want to read more about this artical from the The New York Times click here
Australia's Koalas Are ‘Sliding Towards Extinction’
The species is among 28 animals being assessed for potential upgrade of their threat status as their numbers plummet following sweeping bushfires.
THIS STORY ORIGINALLY appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The koala is being considered for official listing as endangered after the summer’s bushfire disaster and ongoing habitat destruction on the east coast forced the government to reconsider its threat status.
The iconic species, which is currently listed as vulnerable under national environment laws, is among 28 animals that could have their threat status upgraded, Australia's federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, said on Friday, September 25.
The greater glider, which had 30 percent of its habitat range affected by the bushfire crisis, is also being assessed to determine whether it should move from vulnerable to endangered, while several frog and fish species, including the Pugh’s frog and the Blue Mountains perch, are being considered for critically endangered listings.
Several Kangaroo Island species, including the Kangaroo Island crimson rosella and Kangaroo Island white-eared honeyeater, are among birds being assessed for an endangered listing.
Ley has asked the threatened species scientific committee to complete its assessments by October next year.
The koala assessment will apply to the combined populations of New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory, where more than 10 percent of the population was affected by bushfire. Koalas on the east coast are also under multiple other pressures due to continued habitat destruction, drought and disease.
Environmental groups, which nominated the species for an endangered listing, said already severe populations declines had been made worse by the 2019–20 bushfire disaster.
“We welcome prioritization for the koala but also hope the process can be sped up and the koala listed as endangered before October 2021,” said Nicola Beynon of Humane Society International.
Josey Sharrad, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said koalas on Australia’s east coast were “sliding towards extinction” and immediate action was needed to bring the species back from the brink.
A recent New South Wales parliamentary inquiry found koalas would be extinct in the state by 2050 without urgent intervention to protect habitat and help the species recover.
Ley said on Friday that because of the ongoing effects of the bushfires, the government would introduce additional nomination processes for the listing of threatened species over the next two years on top of the annual nomination process.
The 28 species included on the finalized priority assessment list for formal assessment in the 2020 period include two reptiles, four frogs, seven fish, six mammals and 12 birds, bringing the total number of species currently being assessed to 108.
After a species makes the priority list, it is assessed by the scientific committee, which then makes a recommendation to the minister regarding its threat status.
“This process is critical in ensuring threatened species are given strategic protection, are eligible for targeted funding and that awareness is raised about the issues impacting them,” Ley said.
A recent interim report from a review of Australia’s conservation laws found governments had failed to protect Australia’s unique wildlife and the environment was in unsustainable decline.
The government currently has a bill before the parliament to devolve decision-making powers under national environmental laws to the states.