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“Any mans death diminishes me,” wrote John Donne, “because I am involved in Mankinde.” With that thought, let us all wish Donald Trump a full and speedy recovery from his bout of Covid-19.We wish him well because, even, or especially, in our hyperpolitical age, some things must be beyond politics. When everything is political, nothing is sacred — starting with human life. It’s a point the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century understood well.We wish him well because the sudden death of any president is a traumatic national event that will inevitably animate every crackpot in the country. If the term “grassy knoll” still means something in America, just imagine the reaction in the QAnon world if Trump’s condition were to abruptly deteriorate after his stay at Walter Reed.We wish him well because of Mike Pence.We wish him well because, even as he tweets “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” he could still serve as a living witness to the fact that if you stick a lot of maskless people close together you are likely to spread the virus, as it has to more than a dozen people, and counting, in his circle. Courage, says Aristotle, is the mean between rashness and cowardice. Trump may still be rash, but his followers don’t need to be.We wish him well because doing otherwise would bring us down to his level — the victory he has always sought; the victory that, among both his fervent loyalists and angriest critics, he has largely gained. The goal of the Trump project is the diminishment of moral expectations and the debasement of public norms. For his enemies to wish him dead would be his ultimate vindication.We wish him well because the country requires a political referendum, not a literal post-mortem, on this presidency. Trump’s illness is an incident of nature, but his brand of politics is a force in the world of ideas. If he loses re-election (at least if he loses by a wide margin), then right-wing populism loses also, in the U.S. and across the world. If he wins, then those of us who are his opponents will have to take stock of the ways in which we have hurt our own cause. That includes the way in which our personal distaste for the man and our condescension, overt or implicit, to his voters have made us even more distasteful to ordinary Americans than he is.We wish him well because if, God forbid, the president were to die this month, he would go down undefeated, a martyr to the tens of millions of Americans who’ve treated him as a savior. Trump’s death would guarantee a long life for Trumpism, with his children as its principal beneficiaries.We wish him well because Trump’s opponents — Democrats and NeverTrumpers alike — need a clean political victory. If Trump survives but is forced to endure a difficult recovery, it could put the hideousness of last week’s debate behind him, mute the criticism of his performance and soften his image in the eyes of wavering voters. The longer he lingers, the better his chances may be, at least politically.We wish him well because if illness keeps him sidelined and he winds up losing the election, he will surely blame the disease for the loss. This could well be untrue (see above), but it won’t stop his supporters from believing it. Again, Trump the man needs to live — and lose — because it’s the only way the Trump cult might die.We wish him well because it is too rich for words to see his chronic apologists in the media suddenly become appalled and dismayed by the bad manners of those who have gloated over Trump’s diagnosis. Who are these latter-day Captain Renaults, “shocked, shocked” to discover the incivilities of American discourse? And where were they, other than cheering from the sidelines or murmuring evasions about the president’s “style,” when it was the president insulting and defaming his critics?We wish him well because we are better than he is. We are better than the man who mocked Hunter Biden for his substance-abuse issues. We are better than the man who called NeverTrumpers “human scum.” We are better than the man who wants to put his political opponents in jail. We are better than the man who publicly humiliates his own advisers. We are better than the man who demeaned the gold-star parents of a fallen soldier. We are better than the man who pantomimed the physical disabilities of a reporter. We are better than the man who stiffs his suppliers and swindles his “students.” We are better than the man who uses his celebrity to grope. We are better than the man who took a bone-spur draft deferment so that he could live to denigrate the courage of prisoners of war. We are better than the man who race-baited and conspiracy-theorized his way into political relevance.We wish him well because it’s the right thing to do. It’s more than reason enough.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

On Friday, even as President Trump had trouble getting enough oxygen and aides prepared to move him to the nation’s top military hospital, some of his campaign advisers saw a potential opportunity.If Mr. Trump recovered quickly from his bout with the coronavirus and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset. The health crisis, one campaign official said, was a setback in a re-election campaign that polls have shown him losing for months, but also a chance to demonstrate a new stance toward the virus that might win over some voters.And the president could use that to show from now until the second presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 15, that the disease is serious but can be combated, and that he was ready to re-enter the campaign.While that was the hope, it was severely undermined over the last few days by the president’s own behavior — no more so than Monday when he tweeted to the nation “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life!” without acknowledging that, as president, he gets far better care than the average citizen. His comments signaled a far likelier reality: that the erratic handling of his illness by Mr. Trump and his aides will remind voters of his administration’s failures and efforts to play down the deadly pandemic for six months.“There’s a high-risk strategy here and I hope that the president doesn’t rush back into the campaign mode — which he wants to do before he gets well — until they tell him he’s no longer a danger to everybody else,” said Ed Rollins, an adviser to a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump.Itching to get out of the hospital, Mr. Trump got his wish on Monday evening. Doctors allowed him to leave for the White House, while acknowledging he hadn’t yet reached the critical seven- to 10-day window that doctors watch for with the coronavirus to see whether patients take a turn for the worse.Arriving back at the White House, he climbed two flights of stairs to the Truman Balcony, which isn’t his normal entry point, and almost immediately ripped off his mask for the cameras once there. He then filmed a campaign-style video from the balcony, saying that he was “better” and that “maybe I’m immune, I don’t know” to the ravages of the virus. It is hardly the first time Mr. Trump has undermined the desires of his aides. He has contradicted them on issues ranging from China policy to preparation for the debate last week.Over the weekend, Mr. Trump’s political advisers said they were cleareyed about who they were dealing with: Mr. Trump is widely seen as a figure incapable of empathy. But the hope was that discussing his own experience would help him manage the pandemic going forward, and could have political benefits.Mr. Trump did little to adhere to the narrative aides were hoping would emerge, one that would benefit him politically. In videos filmed by aides of Mr. Trump behind the scenes, intended to show him working, the president did not mention the hardship the virus had caused to others or that anyone had suffered greatly from it. Nor did he mention the White House staff members who had fallen sick.And his tweet, which also declared that “I feel better than I did 20 years ago,” framed the virus as something akin to a weekend at a spa. It signaled that Mr. Trump would most likely return to the campaign trail spouting more false rhetoric about the virus.“It appears the campaign hasn’t discussed their concept with their candidate,” said Brendan Buck, a former adviser to the former House speaker Paul D. Ryan. “You would hope someone who has been in serious health crisis would have a bit of an awakening, find a little religion on this, but he seems incapable of doing that.”Mr. Buck said the president’s approach was not necessarily helpful to him politically because it “didn’t pass the laugh test for a super serious situation that has ruined millions of people’s lives.” But he said it was still concerning because “half the country takes their cues from him.”Another Republican strategist, Antonia Ferrier, a former adviser to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said the president could take cues from other world leaders who had won a battle with the virus.“After being released from the hospital, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed in personal terms how the virus impacted him — thanking those who helped him get back on his feet, committing to tackling the virus and balancing the challenges facing his country,” she said. “President Trump has an opportunity to communicate a similarly positive message.”The campaign started to publicly preview that approach. “He has experience now fighting the coronavirus as an individual,” said Erin Perrine, a campaign spokeswoman. “Joe Biden doesn’t have that.”It’s similar to a message Mr. Trump broadcast in 2016 — that he was able to combat corruption in the political system because he had once been part of that system as a donor.Trump campaign officials continue to insist they are making no alternative preparations for the second debate and plan to be there. But Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House physician, said it would not be clear until Oct. 12 whether Mr. Trump is over the hump of his virus.Mr. Trump signaled his eagerness to resume campaigning in a Twitter post Monday evening. “Will be back on the Campaign Trail soon!!! The Fake News only shows the Fake Polls,’’ he wrote.Internally at the Trump campaign, the view of the candidate’s chances are mixed. Advisers continue to hold out the belief that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s challenger, could stumble, or that unforeseen events could intervene in the race. They frequently mention that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was made public on Oct. 7, 2016, a revelation that was supposed to sink Mr. Trump but did not. Mr. Trump’s advisers are also trying to paint the virus as one in a long string of fights he has overcome, in line with the investigation into whether his campaign had ties with Russia or the impeachment inquiry.When talking about their internal polling, some officials insist the surveys need to be shifted to account for “hidden” Trump voters who showed up in 2016.But the campaign, which in September cut down on the number of traditional polls it had been previously been conducting, according to two people familiar with the decision, has been suffering a cash crunch that won’t be helped by Mr. Trump’s inability to appear at fund-raisers.Campaign officials said the expectation was still to resume presidential rallies before November, contending that Mr. Trump’s only real exposure to people at those events was on the plane, and the entourage traveling with him would be smaller because so many of his own aides are out sick as well. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal deliberations.The president in many ways continues to behave as if he is a private citizen who happens to work in the White House. He has been incensed, for example, at reporting on whether he might have to transfer power to the vice president, the type of news coverage that has existed when other presidents have faced medical issues.“With four weeks remaining and nearly four million Americans already casting their votes, it’s awfully late to change perceptions about President Trump or his performance,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist.“And to the extent voters are open to reassessing their views, the president’s video dispatch from Walter Reed reflected the challenge of what his campaign seeks to do: The initial glimpse of humanity and humility quickly gives way to a rambling monologue that undermines the whole endeavor.” More

After months of delays, President Trump’s son Eric was questioned under oath on Monday as part of a civil investigation by New York’s attorney general into whether the Trump family’s real estate company committed fraud.The deposition came less than a month before the presidential election. And while the interview was not made public, the mere fact that it happened before Election Day was a victory for the attorney general, Letitia James, whose inquiry is one of several legal actions the president and his company, the Trump Organization, are facing.Ms. James’s office declined to comment about what was discussed in the deposition, which was conducted remotely and ended around 5 p.m. It was unclear when the questioning began.Marc L. Mukasey, who represents Eric Trump along with Alan S. Futerfas, also declined to comment, as did Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel.The attorney general’s investigation is focused on whether the Trump Organization inflated its assets to get bank loans and tax benefits.In August, Ms. James, saying the company had tried to stall the inquiry, asked a judge to order Eric Trump, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization who runs its day-to-day operations, to answer questions under oath and to order the company to turn over documents.Ms. James, a Democrat, sought the order after Mr. Trump pulled out of an interview with her office in July, and after the company said that it and its lawyers would not comply with seven subpoenas.Eric Trump’s lawyers responded to Ms. James’s move by arguing that he was willing to be interviewed by lawyers from the attorney general’s office, but only after the election.The delay was necessary, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said, because their client was busy campaigning for his father and because he did not want his deposition to be used “for political purposes.”But Justice Arthur F. Engoron of State Supreme Court in Manhattan rejected those arguments and ordered Eric Trump to sit for a deposition no later than Oct. 7.“This court finds that application unpersuasive,” the judge said from the bench after a two-hour hearing on Sept. 23. “Mr. Trump cites no authority in support of his request, and in any event, neither petitioner, nor this court, is bound by timelines of the national election.”Justice Engoron also ordered the Trump Organization and several related entities and lawyers to turn over records connected to four of the properties that Ms. James is scrutinizing.Eric Trump reacted to the ruling by assailing the attorney general’s investigation as “a continued political vendetta.” Nonetheless, he added, “since I previously agreed to appear for an interview, I will do so as scheduled.”Ms. James began her inquiry last year after the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, told Congress that Mr. Trump had overstated the value of his assets in financial statements when seeking bank loans and had understated them to reduce real estate taxes.The investigation is focused on a number of Trump properties, including several that came up during Mr. Cohen’s congressional testimony. Those that were the subject of the subpoenas were the Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and the Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles.Court documents released in August suggested that there were concerns within the Trump Organization that the attorney general’s civil inquiry could develop into a criminal investigation.Last year, Ms. James reached a settlement with the president under which he admitted misusing money from a personal foundation to promote his campaign and pay off business debt.The other legal matters facing President Trump include an inquiry by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has suggested in court filings that it is investigating whether he and the Trump Organization possibly committed financial crimes and insurance fraud, and is fighting in federal court to obtain his tax returns.Mr. Trump’s finances came under added scrutiny when The New York Times published a detailed investigation that, among other things, found he paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.The president is also being sued for defamation by the writer E. Jean Carroll in a case that the Justice Department, in an unusual step, recently moved to take over from his private lawyers. On Monday, Ms. Carroll’s lawyers moved to block the Justice Department from intervening. More

President at hospital overnight after putting staff ‘at risk’
Walter Reed physician among critics of Trump drive-by visit
Niece says president sees illness as sign of ‘unforgivable weakness’
Poll: Trump 14 points behind Biden month before election
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At a town hall in September with undecided voters, President Trump defended his record on racial income inequality by asking the audience to look back to 2019. “Before the plague, we were doing very well,” he said. Were we? Guess Trump’s record on different topics by dragging the circles on the charts below. 1. How […] More

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Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016 targeted nearly 3.5 million Black Americans to deter them from voting, and the battle for the right to vote is just as important in 2020. Kenya Evelyn travels to Florida where it’s the Democrats’ most loyal bloc, Black women, who are also bearing the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak, with its impact accelerating the fight for voting rights. From mail-in ballots and early voting, to felon disenfranchisement, Black voters are wielding their power to demand more from Democrats ahead of November
Black voting power: the fight for change in Milwaukee, one of America’s most segregated cities

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Maybe Donald Trump got Covid-19 at the Rose Garden ceremony announcing his nomination of Amy Coney Barret to the supreme court. On Saturday 26 September, Donald Trump gathered major Republican party leaders at the White House to celebrate his nomination of the rabidly anti-choice judge, along with national leaders in the anti-choice movement. At the event, onlookers were seated uncomfortably close together, and virtually none of them are wore masks. Barrett and her pointedly large family huddled around Trump both indoors and outdoors, without a thought of social distancing. Later, videos emerged from the event of Republicans hugging. In one, the attorney general, William Barr, wipes snot from his nose on to his hand, and then goes on to shake hands with many others – a metaphor for his time at the justice department that is perhaps a bit too on the nose. As numerous national Republicans sicken, at least eight cases of the virus have now been linked to that event.Or maybe Trump got it the night before, on Friday 25 September, when he mingled, again unmasked and indoors, at a campaign fundraiser at the Trump International hotel in Washington. He rubbed elbows there with members of the Republican National Committee, including Ronna McDaniel, the committee chairwoman. McDaniel flew home to Michigan the next day, and began exhibiting symptoms of the virus a few days after. She has since tested positive.Or maybe he got it at the presidential debate in Cleveland the following Tuesday, 29 September. Trump and his entourage were supposed to be tested upon their arrival at the venue, as the Biden camp was. Instead, the Republicans showed up late, and refused both testing and masks. Trump proceeded to scream, unmasked and nearly uninterrupted, for 90 minutes. Viewers watching on high-definition screens could see droplets of spittle flinging from his mouth. Among other things, at the debate he disparaged his opponent, Joe Biden, for wearing masks in public. Eleven cases have now been traced to that event.It’s not clear when Trump last tested negative for the virus, and the White House has been elusive at best and deceptive at worst in their public accounts of when the administration became aware that the virus was circulating in the president’s inner circle and just how bad his condition has gotten. This past Friday, 2 October, Trump was airlifted to the hospital – but not until after financial markets had closed for the weekend. When a team of doctors gave a rosy depiction of his condition to assembled news cameras on Saturday, saying his prognosis was good, his chief of staff promptly contradicted them in an attempted off-the-record conversation with pool reporters, in which he said that the president was doing much worse than the doctors had made it seem.The administration’s handling of the president’s illness has had the shambolic quality of Wile E Coyote attempting to catch Road Runner. They are caught in such absurdly transparent lies that one almost expects their noses to grow long as they speak, or a cartoon anvil to drop on their heads in divine retribution. It would be funny, if only these people did not also possess such terrifying power along with their ostentatious incompetence.But even the Trump camp have not been able to deny that the president knew he had been exposed by Thursday, when Hope Hicks, the senior White House aide to whom the president is usually in breathingly close proximity, tested positive for the virus. Hicks had begun feeling ill while traveling with Trump on Wednesday night, but accompanied him on flights both before and after the onset of her symptoms. Despite Hicks’s positive test, Trump departed on Thursday for a campaign fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he schmoozed with guests both indoors and outdoors, did not wear a mask and welcomed donors to a buffet dinner.Why would Trump endanger his own supporters like that? It has long been clear, both from their own statements and from reporting done by outlets such as Vanity Fair, that the Trump administration considers deaths and illness from the virus in blue states to be insignificant, acceptable casualties. But the choice in Bedminster to endanger his own supporters defies that logic. Unless of course, you are Donald Trump, who views every interaction as transactional and every human being as a number. The Bedminster event, remember, was a campaign fundraiser – it ultimately raised more than $5m for his re-election bid. To Trump, even those who fulfill his own need for constant adulation are less valuable as human beings than they are as sources of revenue. And Trump certainly does not care about the workers whose labor is necessary to put on such events – the security and janitors and caterers and tech staff whose health, lives and families are threatened by his carelessness. The reason Trump continued on to the Bedminster fundraiser even after knowing he had been exposed is simple: he cares less about even his supporters’ safety than he does about getting their money.There is something poetic, even perversely satisfying, about seeing Trump’s delusions about his own power and imperviousness defied by his infection. Here is a man who has wielded money, privilege and deception to evade consequence in every manmade system. He is not capable of being shamed, and he is seemingly invulnerable to the law, with prosecution of his crimes suspended until he leaves office and civil lawsuits impacting him with all the effectiveness of spitballs launched at a tank. Bad things don’t usually happen to Donald Trump, no matter how much recklessness he exhibits or how much suffering he inflicts, because he is usually able to lie, buy or cheat his way out of his comeuppance. Not so with the virus, which has infected him even though he has treated the disease more as an inconvenient nuisance rather than a national emergency.Donald the Super-Spreader is an insult to those Americans who have altered their own lives beyond recognition in order to fight the coronavirusBut more than anything, Donald the Super-Spreader is an insult to those Americans who have altered their own lives beyond recognition in order to fight the coronavirus. As lockdowns began in March, the Americans who retreated to their homes were told that the extreme measures were temporary ways to slow the speed of the disease and buy time for the government to come up with a viable response. But the Trump government did not respond, and instead our lives warped and narrowed. Millions have lost their jobs. Children’s educations have suffered as schools have been forced to close. Women who must supervise their children’s online learning have been forced from the workforce at a disproportionate rate, and many of those women’s careers will never recover, their dreams dashed permanently by the incompetence of the federal response. Meanwhile, many of us have not seen our parents in months, for fear of infecting them. More than 210,000 Americans have now died from the virus, most of them alone and all of them needlessly.Meanwhile, nothing about national Republicans’ lives seem to have changed. They go on hugging and gathering in close together, wiping their noses on their hands and then shaking them, yelling wide-mouthed about the ineffectiveness of masks. Watching the videos of the Rose Garden ceremony, I couldn’t help but think of the funerals I have attended over the past year over Zoom. Trump and the national Republicans have been living in a different world from the rest of America. Now that the virus has reached them, maybe they will have to know what our world feels like. More

President Trump’s doctors offered rosy assessments of his condition on Sunday, but the few medical details they disclosed — including his fluctuating oxygen levels and a decision to begin treatment with a steroid drug — suggested to many infectious disease experts that he is suffering a more severe case of Covid-19 than the physicians acknowledged.In photos and videos released by the White House, there is hardly any sign that Mr. Trump is sick. But at a news conference at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Mr. Trump’s doctors said his oxygen levels had dropped to a level that can indicate that a patient’s lungs are compromised. The symptom is seen in many patients with severe Covid-19.The president’s medical team also said that he had been prescribed dexamethasone on Saturday. The drug is a steroid used to head off an immune system overreaction that kills many Covid-19 patients.The drug is reserved for those with severe illness, because it has not been shown to benefit those with milder forms of the disease and may even be risky.Because of the incomplete picture offered by the president’s doctors, it was not clear whether they had given him dexamethasone too quickly, or whether the president was far sicker than has been publicly acknowledged, experts in infectious disease and emergency medicine said on Sunday.“The dexamethasone is the most mystifying of the drugs we’re seeing him being given at this point,” said Dr. Thomas McGinn, physician-in-chief at Northwell Health, the largest health care provider in New York State. The drug is normally not used unless the patient’s condition seems to be deteriorating, he added.“Suddenly, they’re throwing the kitchen sink at him,” Dr. McGinn said. “It raises the question: Is he sicker than we’re hearing, or are they being overly aggressive because he is the president, in a way that could be potentially harmful?”Dr. Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, said of the doctors’ statements on Sunday: “This is no longer aspirationally positive. And it’s much more than just an ‘abundance of caution’ kind of thing.”Some experts raised an additional possibility: that the president is directing his own care, and demanding intense treatment despite risks he may not fully understand. The pattern even has a name: V.I.P. syndrome, which describes prominent figures who receive poor medical care because doctors are too zealous in treating them — or defer too readily to their instructions.“You think you’re helping,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine. “But this is really a data-free zone, and you just don’t know that.”Still, based on the doctors’ account, Mr. Trump’s symptoms appear to have rapidly progressed since he announced early Friday morning that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.Mr. Trump had a “high fever” on Friday, and there were two occasions when his blood oxygen levels dropped, his doctors said — on Friday and again on Saturday. The president’s oxygen saturation level was 93 percent at one point, his doctors said, below the 95 percent that is considered the lower limit of the normal range.Many medical experts consider patients to have severe Covid-19 if their oxygen levels drop below 94 percent. The physicians said Mr. Trump had received supplemental oxygen at the White House on Friday; they were not clear about whether it had been administered again on Saturday, or whether his blood oxygen levels had fallen below 90 at some point.On Friday, Mr. Trump was given an infusion of an experimental antibody cocktail that is being tested in Covid-19 patients by the drugmaker Regeneron. Mr. Trump is also receiving a five-day course of remdesivir, another experimental drug that is used in hospitalized patients and has been granted emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.Regeneron’s antibody cocktail is being tested in patients early in the course of the infection, because the treatment fights the virus itself and may prevent it from spreading throughout the body.Remdesivir is also an antiviral and is already commonly used with dexamethasone, which tamps down the body’s immune response and is given later in the illness, when some patients’ immune systems go into overdrive and attack their vital organs.On Sunday, the doctors said that Mr. Trump was in good spirits and that he was walking on his own and not complaining of shortness of breath.“If he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is to plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow to the White House, where he can continue his treatment,” one of his doctors, Dr. Brian Garibaldi, said at the briefing on Sunday.But several medical experts said that the decision to prescribe dexamethasone to Mr. Trump did not align with that optimistic scenario.A large study of dexamethasone in Britain found that the drug helped those who had been sick for more than a week, reducing deaths by one-third among patients on mechanical ventilators and by one-fifth among patients receiving supplemental oxygen by other means.Guidelines from the World Health Organization recommend that the drug only be given to patients with “severe and critical Covid-19.” The National Institutes of Health has issued similar guidance, specifying that the drug is recommended only for people who require a mechanical ventilator to help them breathe, or who need supplemental oxygen.“When I think about people needing dexamethasone, I think about people who are escalating their condition, who are heading closer to I.C.U. level than to home,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of the division of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School.Using multiple drugs at once could have an impact on their effectiveness, and it increases the risk of harmful drug interactions, said Dr. McGinn.“You’re giving remdesivir, you’re giving dexamethasone, and you’re giving monoclonal antibodies,” he said, referring to the experimental treatment by Regeneron. “No one’s ever done that, not to mention famotidine and some zinc and a mix of cocktails, or whatever else he’s on.”Uncertainty over the president’s condition stemmed at least in part from earlier mixed signals from the president’s physicians. On Sunday, the team acknowledged delivering an overly positive description of the president’s illness on Saturday.“I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and in doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true,” Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House physician, said to reporters on Sunday.Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious diseases physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the panel that developed Covid-19 treatment guidelines for the N.I.H, said, “What would be very helpful to know is how much oxygen did the president need and for how long.”The president’s physicians also have not described in detail the results of imaging scans of Mr. Trump’s lungs, or of blood tests indicating whether he is at risk for blood clots, a common complication in Covid-19 disease.Mr. Trump is moderately obese, a condition that is usually accompanied by at least mild or moderate hypertension and mild to moderate diabetes, Dr. McGinn noted. The president’s high blood pressure is said to be under control, and he is not known to have Type 2 diabetes. Still, studies have identified the conditions as critical predictors of severe Covid-19 disease.If Mr. Trump’s illness has significantly progressed, then dexamethasone and remdesivir are appropriate, several doctors said.“He got the therapies that anybody going into any good hospital in the United States would receive today,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta.But the doctors also raised the possibility they might discharge the president as early as Monday, shortly after starting him on the steroid therapy, perplexing some experts.“If you start somebody on steroids because their oxygen saturations are dropping, then that is the time to be vigilant and to be monitoring somebody more closely,” said Dr. Sam Parnia, an associate professor of critical care medicine at N.Y.U. Langone who has seen many Covid-19 patients.“If there was a concern that certain things were not available at the White House when his oxygen was a little higher, it probably makes sense to be vigilant now,” Dr. Parnia said.The fact that Mr. Trump is walking on his own, and that he delivered video statements in which he was able to complete sentences without gasping for breath, was seen as a positive sign by several experts.Nevertheless, many sick Covid-19 patients appear to be doing well even when their lung function is poor, a condition doctors have nicknamed “happy hypoxia.”“Of course, we like to see that he is feeling good, but it doesn’t put him in a category that’s essentially mild Covid,” Dr. Choo said.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Steroids may also give a false impression of the patient’s state. The drugs are also known to affect mood, causing euphoria or a general happiness. Steroids can also disrupt sleep, leading to insomnia, irritability or depression.In some cases they may cause psychiatric effects, leading to feelings of grandiosity and mania, or even delirium and psychosis.“The thing about steroids is they can have psychiatric side effects at almost any dose,” said Dr. J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist with the Mayo Clinic who authored a paper on the subject.While steroids are used widely in medicine without much concern about psychotropic effects, “it is necessary to notice if the use of these drugs causes changes in mood or thinking or sleep,” Dr. Bostwick said.During the first week of Covid-19, the course of disease is unpredictable, Dr. Parnia said. It is never clear whether the illness will progress or plateau. “It can go north, or it can go south,” he said.Any patient who has experienced low oxygen levels, or hypoxemia, must be closely watched, said Dr. Michelle Prickett, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.“It’s hard to feel confident early that things are going to turn around, especially in the presence of hypoxemia early on,” she said.Denise Grady, Maggie Haberman and Sheryl Stolberg contributed reporting. More