Doctor busts White House physician for ‘cherry-picking’ info to get Trump back out on the campaign trail
11 October 2020
Appearing on CNN early Sunday morning, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed stated that White House physician Dr. Sean Conley is not being straightforward with the public about Donald Trump's health and that he is "cherry-picking" the information to be released to help out the president's faltering re-election campaign.
Speaking with host Victor Blackwell, the epidemiologist said there is way more information missing about the president's COVID-19 infection than was revealed in a letter clearing the president to travel this week to rallies.
"They talked about advanced diagnostics, meaning they were looking for a test to spin this argument because it's clear it's coming from the president," the doctor explained. "In fact, all of the information that we've gotten about the president's health has usually just come via the doctor from the president."
"And so that's number one," he continued. "Number two, right, there are open questions right now. One, he wouldn't have met criteria in terms of just basic CDC protocol and in fact, the CDC recommends for someone who has had a serious case, which the president had — he had to be hospitalized, his oxygen saturation dipped below 94 several times, he needed supplemental oxygen — that those folks require 20 days, 20 days. He's not even at ten from today."
"That's one point," El-Sayed added. "The second points also the fact that, you know, as much as we understand the president wants to get back there on the campaign trail, ask yourself if you or someone you worked on Air Force One, if you were someone who worked at the White House after 37-plus people tested positive from one super-spread event, would you want to be on an airplane with the president of the United States based on what is the flimsiest of arguments about his non-contagiousness? I don't think so."
"Am I reading too deeply into this, or am I characterizing this wrong to say that this is cherry-picked happy talk?" host Blackwell asked.
"Whatever the good news is — remember, we heard from Dr. Conley on the first update that, you know, he wouldn't confirm oxygen or no supplemental oxygen, and the next day said, well, I just wanted to give everyone the optimistic view to reflect how upbeat everyone is," the doctor explained. "If he hasn't been febrile for over 24 hours, they're picking some number that can seem reassuring. That means that two days ago, right, he probably had a fever. People don't pop fevers for no reason; they have fevers because there are viruses in their body. And what that indicates is that at least two days ago the president's body was reacting to a virus that was inside of it by spiking a fever. That's one of the things the body does to try and raise the temperature on the virus so the bacteria in your body can try and kill it. It's a marker of a much more active immune response."
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