President Donald J. Trump’s blood oxygen level sank to a precariously low level after he announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus last year, according to a new book by Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff.The new details contradict Mr. Trump’s denials this year that his Covid bout was more dire than White House medical officials had acknowledged at the time.Mr. Meadows’s book, titled “The Chief’s Chief,” goes on sale on Tuesday. He describes his tenure in the White House, alternately promoting Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and attacking the news media. Mr. Meadows also revealed previously undisclosed details about the former president’s medical condition in October 2020.Mr. Trump, who has long been fearful of appearing weak, has tried to camouflage those details. The White House staff and members of his medical team aided that effort, publicly downplaying how sick he was at the time. The former president denied a detailed New York Times report this year that he was more ill than his aides had revealed, with depressed oxygen levels and lung infiltrates, which occur when they are inflamed and filled with fluid or bacteria.Mr. Meadows recounts in extraordinary detail how severe Mr. Trump’s illness was.On Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, hours after the president announced on Twitter that he had tested positive for the virus, he recorded a blood oxygen level of about 86 percent, Mr. Meadows wrote. That is roughly 10 points below what would be considered normal. Most healthy people have a blood oxygen level of about 95 to 98 percent, although some people may have lower normal readings.Mr. Trump’s health had deteriorated so much that day that members of his medical team feared they would not be able to treat him adequately without immediate attention from hospital staff, Mr. Meadows wrote.“That morning, Dr. Conley pulled me aside and delivered some bad news,” Mr. Meadows wrote, referring to Dr. Sean P. Conley, the head of Mr. Trump’s White House medical team. “Although the president’s condition had improved slightly overnight, his oxygen levels had now dipped down to about 86 percent and could be trending lower, a dangerously low level for someone his age.”Mr. Meadows wrote that Mr. Trump’s doctors “had decided to put the president on oxygen in the residence and hope for the best.”When it was clear he would need outside care, Mr. Trump’s medical team made the case to Mr. Meadows to intervene.“We don’t have the resources to do it here,” Dr. Conley told Mr. Meadows about the president’s condition.“I worried that the notion of him going to the hospital, in his mind, would seem like an act of capitulation,” Mr. Meadows wrote. “I was right.”He described walking into Mr. Trump’s private residence to see him in a T-shirt, sitting up in bed. “It was the first time I had seen him in anything other than a golf shirt or a suit jacket,” Mr. Meadows wrote. The president, he said, was making phone calls and trying to work.“If it hadn’t been for the oxygen tank by his side, I might have forgotten he was sick at all,” Mr. Meadows wrote. But his attention snapped back to Mr. Trump’s appearance: “I remembered what Dr. Conley had said. We were in trouble, and the president needed to get to the hospital.”Mr. Trump had red streaks in his eyes, Mr. Meadows recounted, and “his hair was a mess from the hours he’d spent getting Regeneron in bed,” referring to an antibody infusion the president had received.ImageMr. Trump arrived at Walter Reed on Oct. 2, 2020.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe president was initially resistant to leaving the White House and told Mr. Meadows that he was going to be fine. Mr. Meadows intensified his pleas. “It’s better that you walk out of here today under your own strength, your own power, than for me to have to carry you out on a gurney in two days,” he recounted.Mr. Trump relented. On the walk out to his helicopter, he had lost so much strength that he dropped a briefcase he had planned to carry outside, where reporters were lined up to observe him, Mr. Meadows recalled.A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.Last week, The Guardian obtained a copy of Mr. Meadows’s book and revealed that Mr. Trump had first tested positive for the coronavirus on Sept. 26, 2020, three days before his first presidential debate with Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Meadows has criticized reporters for focusing on that test and not the negative result from a different test a short time later. Mr. Trump has tried to make the same case, insisting that Mr. Meadows had affirmed that he was not sick before or “during” the debate.Yet in his own book, Mr. Meadows writes that “we’ll probably never know whether President Trump was positiveBy: Maggie Haberman and Noah Weiland
Title: Trump’s Blood Oxygen Level in Covid Bout Was Dangerously Low, Former Aide Says
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/us/politics/trump-covid-blood-oxygen.html
Published Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2021 00:29:18 +0000
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