President Donald Trump has required personnel at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to sign nondisclosure agreements before they could be involved with treating him, according to four people familiar with the process. During a surprise trip to Walter Reed on Nov. 16, 2019, Trump mandated signed NDAs from both physicians and nonmedical staff, most of whom are active-duty military service members, these people said. At least two doctors at Walter Reed who refused to sign the NDAs were subsequently not permitted to have any involvement in the president's care, two of the people said.

The reason for his trip last year remains shrouded in mystery.

The four people familiar with the process did not know whether, during the president's most recent visit over the weekend, he had the same requirement for Walter Reed staff members who had not previously been involved in his care.

Anyone providing medical services to the president — or any other American — is automatically prohibited by federal law from disclosing the patient's personal health information without consent. The existing legal protection for all patients under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, raises the question of why Trump would insist that staff members at Walter Reed sign NDAs.

"Any physician caring for the President is bound by patient physician confidentiality guaranteed under HIPAA, and I'm not going to comment on internal procedures beyond that," White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.

In addition, all personnel assigned to the White House Medical Unit, which treats the president and the vice president day to day, are required to have special "Yankee White" security clearance. To obtain the clearance, they must be U.S. citizens and undergo extensive background checks.

Bisbee wrote: Thu Oct 08, 2020 10:14 am YW
“Why Double-ewe” was also considered as the acronym for the enhanced background screening clearance but people close to the president said he was concerned the Internet would think he was cryptically referencing a previous tennant of the White House, or an unnatural fondness for sheep. Both were abhorrent to the president.

CDFingers wrote: Thu Oct 08, 2020 8:23 am Regeneron cured him, so coincidentally Regeneron asks for emergency approval by the FDA.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/heal ... neron.html

Aaannnnd coincidentally he also has ties to that company.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/05/investin ... index.html

Is that not adorable?

As Trump wrongly hailed his treatment – which included a drug called REGN-COV2 produced by Regeneron – as a “cure”, it emerged that the company’s chief executive, Leonard Schleifer, is a member of the Trump National golf club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, and had met the president in May to talk about drugs his company was developing.

While some ethicists have defended Trump’s privileged access as president to experimental treatments, others have suggested it raises questions of fairness among other concerns, including his history of touting unproven treatments.

Trump’s relationship with Schleifer, whom he reportedly calls “Lenny”, adds to growing questions over the president’s almost exclusive access to experimental treatments unavailable to most other Americans, even as he has continued to downplay the threat of coronavirus based on his own experience.

The price of Regeneron stocks – which Trump has owned in the past – soared after it was revealed the drug had been made available for his treatment and Trump stated it would be made freely available for all, although he didn’t explain how.

“I call that a cure,” Trump said in a video

Trump to get on-camera ‘medical evaluation’ by hydroxychloroquine-pushing Fox News doctor

There are many questions swirling around President Donald Trump and his current health status: When did he first test positive for coronavirus? When was his last negative test? Why is the White House using a rapid test to claim people are coronavirus-free when it’s designed only for those with coronavirus symptoms? What is Trump’s current viral load? Why won’t Trump or his doctors say if he has currently tested negative?

The list is long.

None of those questions are expected to be answered tonight, when a pro-Trump hydroxychloroquine-pushing Fox News doctor who has made questionable and just plain false coronavirus claims will examine President Trump on the conservative cable network’s show hosted by Tucker Carlson.

Fox News recently won a court case by arguing reasonable viewers should not believe what is said on Carlson’s show.

This morning, just 25 days before Election Day, the network announced “President Trump is scheduled to make his first on-camera interview appearance on Friday since he announced last week that he tested positive for the novel coronavirus.”

Notice even Fox doesn’t say “since he tested positive for the novel coronavirus.” It says “since he announced.”

Because the Trump administration refuses to level with the American people about the health of their president.

“The interview will take place on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ at 8 p.m. ET. Dr. Marc Siegel will conduct a medical evaluation and interview during the program.”

That is Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel.

Media Matters reports that Siegel has appeared nearly 300 times on Fox News, as of Sept. 29, to discuss coronavirus, and says he “regularly pushes coronavirus misinformation, downplays the severity of the crisis, and discards science in favor of right-wing talking points.”

“In the past,” Bloomberg adds, Dr. Siegel “has speculated without evidence that [Joe] Biden is using speed and Adderall before debates, said it’s ‘almost impossible’ for people under 70 to die from Covid-19, and argued that Speaker Nancy Pelosi should ‘stop pontificating’ about Trump’s health.”

Siegel once even attributed a decline in coronavirus deaths to a coronavirus“vaccine on the horizon” that has not been released.

“Rather than reveal his medical records to reporters the traditional way in 2016, Trump dictated a letter to his doctor and shared it during a TV appearance with Dr. Oz,” Bloomberg reminds Americans.

As for the medical evaluation – not “medical examination,” well, why should Americans trust the word of a physician who “repeatedly compared COVID-19 to the flu and said concern about the pandemic was being exaggerated to attack President Donald Trump politically, then he became among the first Fox personalities to push hydroxychloroquine as a supposed miracle treatment,” as Media Matters reported last month.

What else has Dr. Siegel said about the deadly virus that to date has killed nearly 215,000 people in the United States? Some excerpts from Media Matters’ extensive report:

On February 17, Siegel said he “can’t believe how well” the Trump administration is handling the coronavirus response, adding: “The proof is in the pudding. We have 15 people in the United States with it. That’s it. No one has died.”

Three days later, Siegel described Trump’s leadership on the coronavirus as “tremendous” and said the administration is “spreading confidence.”
On March 6, Siegel said the “worst-case scenario” for coronavirus is “it could be the flu.”

On March 8, Siegel agreed with Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth after he said, “I feel like the more I learn about this, the less there is to worry about.” Siegel responded, “I was about to say the same thing.”

On April 20, Siegel cited unreliable antibody testing data to claim: “The death rate is much, much lower than we’ve been talking about if you think about all these asymptomatic cases versus the tragic 600 that passed away. … We’re talking about a virus that for most cases is dramatically mild, we’re talking about a lower fatality rate than we thought.”

On July 7, he said schools need to reopen because “the risk to teachers is so much lower than it is to doctors.”

On the same day, Siegel said, “The spread among the young is not what is leading to the deaths or hospitalizations.” Recent research has shown this is false: During the time period Siegel made this remark, young people were catching and spreading the disease and may have later passed it on to older, more vulnerable populations.

Siegel pushed Trump campaign talking points falsely labeling Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris as “anti-vaxx,” ignoring that the Trump administration has been undermining scientists in the federal government while promising a viable vaccine by Election Day, which is fueling skepticism toward the president’s claims.

On August 6, Siegel spun Trump’s falsehoods on the risk of coronavirus to children on one of Fox’s “straight news” shows: “I can’t interpret” what Trump meant when he said children are “almost immune” from coronavirus.

What will Americans learn tonight about the health of their President? Probably whatever Trump says is the “truth.”

The antibody cocktail that President Trump received for his COVID-19 infection and touted on Wednesday evening as a "cure" for the deadly virus was developed using cells derived from aborted fetal tissue, a practice the White House and anti-abortion rights groups oppose.

But the way in which the antibody cocktail was developed is at odds with the Trump administration's position on stem cell research. The drug's potency was tested in a lab using HEK 293T cells, a cell line originally derived from the kidney tissue of a fetus aborted in the Netherlands in the 1970s, said a spokesperson for Regeneron in an email to CBS News on Thursday. The cells "were used in testing the antibody candidates' ability to neutralize the virus" and helped researchers "determine the 'best' two antibodies, which now make up the REGN-COV2 cocktail," the spokesperson said.

There is no fetal tissue present in the final product. Remdesivir, an antiviral drug Mr. Trump received, also was tested using the HEK 293T cells.

Last year, the Trump administration said it would no longer support long-standing funding for medical research by government scientists using human fetal tissue, a move that countered advice from physicians and researchers. The decision was seen as a major victory for anti-abortion rights groups.

Because the fetal cells used in developing Regeneron's antibody cocktail were originally derived from an abortion prior to the funding ban, a White House official told CBS News on Thursday that the therapeutic wasn't in violation of the administration's new policy.

Anti-abortion groups, which generally oppose the use of fetal tissue in pharmaceutical research, did not raise issue with the therapeutics used and promoted by the president.

"The president was not given any medicines to treat COVID-19 that involved the destruction of human life," wrote David Prentice, Ph.D., and Tara Sander Lee, Ph.D., of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the anti-abortion rights political group the Susan B. Anthony List, in a statement emailed to CBS News Wednesday afternoon. "No human embryonic stem cells or human fetal tissue were used to produce the treatments President Trump received – period."

The researchers did not address the fact that fetal cells were used for testing earlier in the drug's development process. A spokesperson for the SBA List did not respond to follow up questions. As of Wednesday afternoon, Lila Rose, the co-founder and president of Live Action, an anti-abortion group, rejected that the therapeutic was developed using fetal tissue, writing in an email to CBS News, "To our knowledge, Regeneron was not created using aborted baby tissue."

Despite the president's enthusiasm, medical experts say none of the current treatments amount to a cure for COVID-19, which has killed more than 212,000 Americans to date.

"It's absolutely irresponsible for the president to be calling it a cure," Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, told CBSN. "We can't tell about a drug's efficacy based on its performance in one patient."

featureless wrote: Fri Oct 09, 2020 4:44 pm It always amazes me these anti science people and their use of medications and medical technology.

Trump Reportedly Plotted Wacky Superman Stunt For Walter Reed Discharge

In a series of phone calls, President Donald Trump floated a bizarre idea last week from his presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — he wanted to rip open his dress shirt after discharge to reveal a Superman symbol beneath, The New York Times reported Saturday.

He “wanted to appear frail at first,” people with knowledge of the conversations told the Times. But underneath his dress shirt, Trump would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal by ripping open the top layer of his clothing. He ultimately opted not to go ahead with the stunt. It wasn’t immediately clear why.

Twitter critics were agog. Some compared it to the moment when the reclusive fictional Willy Wonka emerges from his chocolate factory as an apparently sad, limping man with a cane who suddenly somersaults and pops up with a smile.

Trump’s return to the White House Monday after three days in the hospital ended up having little of a superhero vibe about it. After walking up the steps to the White House balcony after exiting Marine One, he appeared to be winded. He did, however, quickly pull off his mask and jammed it into his pocket.

In another odd sort of reality TV twist, he later posted a video of himself after apparently re-doing his White House entrance for a second take.

In his first public appearance Saturday, the president also appeared more subdued than usual. Trump, who has been known to talk for two hours at rallies, was slated for a 30-minute speech on the White House balcony to hundreds of supporters. But he cut it to just 18 minutes.

As for the Superman plot, Twitter followers weren’t happy about Trump besmirching Clark Kent’s character. One wag pointed out that Kent is an undocumented alien — and a journalist.

Bisbee wrote: Fri Dec 25, 2020 4:48 pm An epilogue of sorts for the Presidential Covid superspreader events at the WH:
Head of White House security office has his right foot amputated because of severe COVID-19 and is facing 'staggering medical bills,

Evangelical pastor Jentezen Franklin, a Georgia-based televangelist whose fellowship includes seven mega-church campuses, has tested positive for the coronavirus — about a week after a White House Christmas party.

The news was made public when Franklin didn’t show up for church on Sunday at the Free Chapel in Gainesville. His colleague, Pastor Javon Ruff, broke the news to their congregation.

“We want to make you aware that Pastor Franklin has come in contact with COVID, but he is doing perfectly fine,” said Ruff, according to local media reports.

“He actually is doing great. He went and got tested and his test came back positive so he is doing the right thing to do and staying quarantined and continuing to be distanced,” Ruff continued. Video footage of that day’s service reportedly shows at least 100 churchgoers, many unmasked, the Independent reported.