An election year already defined by a cascade of national crises descended further into chaos, with President Donald Trump quarantined at a military hospital with the coronavirus after consistently playing down the threat.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden took down his attack ads Friday and pressed a bipartisan message in battleground Michigan after he and his wife tested negative.
“This cannot be a partisan moment. It must be an American moment. We have to come together as a nation," Biden declared at a speech in Grand Rapids, warning that the virus “is not going away automatically.”
While Biden vowed to continue his cautious approach to campaigning during the pandemic, the president's diagnosis injected even greater uncertainty into an election already plagued by crises that have exploded under Trump’s watch: the pandemic, devastating economic fallout and sweeping civil unrest. With millions of Americans already voting, the country on Friday entered uncharted territory that threatened to rattle global markets and political debates around the world.
The development focuses the campaign right where Biden has put his emphasis for months — and where Republicans don't want it: on Trump's uneven response to a pandemic that has killed more than 205,000 people in the U.S. And for the short term, it’s grounded Trump under quarantine at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, denying him the large public rallies that fuel his campaign just a month before the election.
Biden and other Democratic officeholders wished Trump well in the wake of his diagnosis, although some could not help but admonish the Republican president, who openly ignored his own administration's social safety recommendations for much of the year.
“Going into crowds unmasked and all the rest was sort of a brazen invitation for this to happen,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC.
The White House reported Friday evening that Trump will spend “a few days” at the military hospital; the president's doctor reported that Trump was “fatigued” and had been injected with an experimental antibody drug combination still in clinical trials. His campaign announced that all of Trump's scheduled campaign events were being moved online or temporarily postponed. Trump's family, a steady presence on the campaign trail, was also grounded.
“The first week of COVID and particularly day seven to 10 are the most critical in determining the likely course of this illness," said Dr. Sean Conley, Trump’s physician. "At this time, the team and I are extremely happy with the progress the president has made.”
Conley said the president is fever-free and not having difficulty breathing, but didn’t say when he contracted the virus, later clarifying that he was diagnosed Thursday evening.
This is raising questions about the timeline of the illness.
“If you look at the calendar, if he started to develop symptoms Friday or Thursday night, or whenever it may have been, go back two or three days, and those would have been the most critical days. That’s during the debate, that’s during all that travel," CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said.
Conley did confirm Trump was treated with the therapeutic remdesivir and received a dose of Regeneron’s experimental antibody cocktail.
News4Jax spoke Saturday with a local infectious disease specialist, who said remdesivir is meant to help COVID-19 patients recover faster.
“In general, a lot of the studies that have been done to show that it works well has been with mild to moderate to severe cases in the hospital setting, and that’s where it can be used by IV only," said Dr. Mohammed Reza, infectious disease specialist with CAN Community Health. “You use it when patients' oxygen saturation is below 92%, so it’s not used on people who are not usually requiring oxygen and are breathing just fine. It is used for people who are requiring some oxygen support or their oxygen saturation has gone below 92%.”
Reza said remdesivir is usually, but not always, used on patients who have decreased oxygen levels and need supplemental oxygen.
“This is not a cure drug. This is not a silver bullet that’s going to cure you if you had COVID-19,” Reza said. “What it did do is decrease the medium time of recovery from 15 days to 11 days. So it wasn’t that everybody that got it survived and did just fine and were able to go back to their normal life.”
Trump said in a video on Twitter on Saturday evening that he’s “starting to feel good.”
With Trump expected to remain hospitalized several more days and the election looming, his condition is being anxiously watched by Americans and followed closely by foreign leaders.
Trump’s physicians say his symptoms, including a mild cough, nasal congestion and fatigue, “are now resolving and improving,” and that the president has been fever-free for 24 hours. But Trump also is taking aspirin, which lowers body temperature.
The president did not address the conflicting reports about his condition in the video he tweeted Saturday evening, though he did acknowledge that the days ahead would be crucial.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel have tested positive for the virus as well. But Vice President Mike Pence, who has tested negative, will attend his campaign events as planned.
Other world leaders, including Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have contracted the virus and made full recoveries. But strategists in both parties acknowledged the timing is bad.
Millions of Americans have already begun voting in several key states, and tens of millions more will receive absentee mail-in ballots or begin in-person early voting in the coming weeks.
“Trump's main advantages, including incumbency, have been removed. Rallies, his main vehicle for mobilizing his base, will no longer be possible. Fly-bys with Air Force One as a backdrop are gone,” said Republican strategist Rick Tyler, a frequent Trump critic.
He said that Trump's infection also “fundamentally undercuts his entire campaign strategy, which was to ignore the pandemic and make unsubstantiated claims that we've turned the corner and are making an economic comeback.”
Biden, meanwhile, moved to take down his ads attacking Trump, according to deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield, who noted that the campaign would continue running positive ads. The decision was made before news surfaced that Trump would be moved to a military hospital.
Otherwise, Biden is not expected to alter his approach to the campaign significantly as Trump recovers.
The Democratic nominee has been much more cautious on the campaign trail than Trump. Having spent much of the spring and summer avoiding crowds, Biden has held far fewer public events since returning to the campaign trail last month — all of them with small crowds, if any, following social distancing guidelines. Only on Thursday did Biden’s campaign announce that it would resume door-to-door canvassing in addition to its phone and digital outreach to voters.
Biden traveled from Delaware to Michigan on Friday afternoon for a campaign event, while Jill Biden was attending a separate event in New Hampshire. Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, made her previously scheduled trip to Las Vegas as well.
The campaign confirmed Biden, his wife and Harris all tested negative for the virus.
“This is not a matter of politics. It’s a bracing reminder to all of us,” Biden said in Grand Rapids, calling for a nationwide mask mandate as he spoke wearing a surgical mask. “We have to take this virus seriously.
Trump now faces tremendous pressure to adjust his rhetoric and campaign tactics after spending much of the year downplaying the severity of the virus and repeatedly declaring COVID-19 would “disappear.”
As recently as Tuesday, Trump ridiculed Biden on national television for his cautious approach.
“I put a mask on when I think I need it,” Trump said during the debate. “I don’t wear masks like him. Every time you see him he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”
Two additional debates are scheduled for Oct. 15 and Oct. 22. The Commission on Presidential Debates has not yet commented on any changes in the debate schedule or health protocols, but has confirmed that next week’s vice presidential debate is on as scheduled.
Both presidential candidates are in high-risk categories for COVID-19 complications. Trump is 74 years old and clinically obese. Biden is 77 years old.
Should Trump emerge with no visible effects, he could declare a speedy recovery as proof that he’s been right about COVID-19 being overblown. But that still would be at odds both with established science and with what Trump himself has said privately. Recordings by journalist Bob Woodward captured Trump in early February detailing the “deadly” consequences of coronavirus, contrary to his public dismissiveness.
“From now until we get to the election, attention is going to be back where it should be: on COVID, the president’s response and the impact — and on health care,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, a Biden supporter. “This proves our candidate was right all along.”
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Associated Press writer Zeke Miller and Alexandra Jaffe contributed to this report.