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So does that mean? I would say the president is a superspreader, Scarpino says. Im happy to say that.

Things didnt have to be this way. Have tight lockdowns, keep everybody from coming into contact with anybody, and R0 goes down. Even the people who are better at transmitting (theyre carrying more virus, theyre at the peak time in their infection, theyre loud talkers, whatever) dont have anybody to transmit to. No more infections.

Or, you know, do the opposite of that. Foster social conditions in which the virus spreads (cold, dry, noisy, crowded, no ventilation). Dont wear masks and make fun of people who do. Result: lots of infections. A virus has biology, and so does its host, but it spreads in an environment, in a context. This is where biology meets policy. You can decompose the transmission of a pathogen into the biological features of the individual pathogens themselves, the biological features of the host, the sociological aspects of the hostand when were talking about humans, we think about policies, the sociotechnical systems embedded in the defective behaviors. All of those things have to interact for transmission, Scarpino says. What we see in the United States time and again is this confluence of reckless policy, poor guidance from federal public health agencies around what people need to do to keep themselves safe, and then the biology of the pathogen and the humans.

Scarpino is part of a team of researchers that has been working on a slightly different characterization of how the virus moves through populations. Their construction looks at a particular form of crowdedness, of how closely packed together people are at different spatial scalesin a building, in a neighborhood, in a city. The specific mathematical term theyre interested in is called Lloyds mean crowding, basically the number of contacts you might expect from random chance transmissions in a given area divided by the population of that area. What theyve found is that more densely packed places are more bursty when it comes to Covid-19. When the virus gets there, it burns through the susceptible population hotter and faster, a sudden, sharp peak of sick people all in one place at one time.

The burstier places might seem isolated at first, and that can make it look like theyre protected. Until they arent. Thats what happens in meat-packing plants and elder-care facilities. It happened in Manaus, a city in the heart of the Amazon rainforest where officials didnt detect any Covid-19 cases until March. Over the next four months, the virus went on to infect up to two-thirds of the population and killed one out of every 500 people. To Scarpino, the White House looks bursty, too. Its really tightly connected, nobodys really wearing masks, lots of social connections. It was really a matter of when. When the virus shows up, its going to sweep through. Youre going to have superspreading. Its just going to take a while, Scarpino says. Really it was just inevitable, because its really a microcosm of what we see playing out over the US: a combination of risky behavior, crappy policy, low testing, and in the White Houses case the exact rightor wrong, depending on how you think about itconnectivity and social network structure.

And not to sound like a Twitter reply-guy here, butthat surprises you because why, exactly? This is the same White House that couldnt institute widespread testing for the disease, or nationwide contact tracing. Its the same White House that promoted untested treatments, and spread informational smog like saying disinfectants and ultraviolet light might work inside peoples bodies. Its the White House that mostly failed to establish reliable clinical trials. Its the same White House that tried to bend the data in the unimpeachable Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Its the same White House with a president who mocked mask-wearing right up until his own hospitalization, and in fact blocked the distribution of 650 million masks to Americans. Its the same White House that rushed the reopening of restaurants and other businesses. Its the same White House that attempted to block more stringent requirements for new vaccines. Its the same White House that had staff and a president show up to a debate after exposure to a deadly pandemic disease and didnt tell anyone. Its the same White House that derided wearing masks as a way to reduce the spread of virus from people without symptomsboth in the world generally and in the White House itself, as a matter of personal choice, even with multiple staffers ill. Its the White Housethe presidentthat told people not to let the virus dominate their lives, who went home from the hospital when he was still sick and almost certainly still infectious. These are all, in their way, superspreading behaviors, as sure as doing a bar crawl when youre sick.

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The Superspreading Presidency of Donald Trump - WIRED

Its hard to process the news of the presidents positive COVID-19 diagnosis without having recourse to some kind of mythological system, some larger frame of reference.

Karma, wrote one journalist, and then reproached himself for the ungenerous thought. Or perhaps it was simple irony on display when, Washington Post reporters wrote, President Trump contracted the novel coronavirus after months in which he and people around himavoided taking basic steps to prevent the viruss spread.

All these reactions make sense. If theres one thing we know about a virus thats still mysterious in many ways, its that this coronavirus is expert at going around.

And as a classics scholar, I can assure you: What goes around comes around. Greek mythology provides insight to help us understand todays chaos.

Many years ago, my high school English teachers put a lot of stress on terms like foreshadowing, climax and denouement. All these words marked points along a steep curve of the development of a story: rising action, turning point, falling action.

There was also a lot of emphasis, as we discussed plots, on a term I then found harder to understand: pride. Pride: arrogance; an exaggerated sense of self-worth. Pride tended to be followed by catastrophe that falling action again.

As a high school student, I tended to confuse pride with vanity, with narcissistic preening; the tragic penalty of vanity seemed exaggeratedly severe.

What does pride really mean? The Greek word it translates is hubris, and pride doesnt quite cover the range of the meaning of hubris. Vanity may well be part of hubris, but a more crucial sense of the word is terrible judgment, gross overconfidence, blindness, obtuseness, a failure to see what is staring you in the face a failure to see it until its too late.

I dont recall my teachers mentioning nemesis or at, forces or principles that are closely associated with hubris in Greek mythology.

Nemesis is more often personified, and hence capitalized, than at. Shes a goddess of retribution, and she can follow acts of hubris with the certainty of a law of gravity except that there may be a considerable time lag, as if one dropped a plate and it took a generation for it to break. That concept likewise appears in the Bibles book of Ezekiel, which says The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children shall be set on edge.

At is a more unpredictable figure, not necessarily personified classics scholar E.R. Dodds in The Greeks and the Irrational tentatively defines at as a sort of guilty rashness.

On the other hand, at can be unforgettably personified, as when Mark Antony addresses the body of Caesar and predicts civil war in Shakespeares Julius Caesar:

And Caesars spirit ranging for revenge,With At by his side, come hot from hell,Shall in these confines, with a monarchs voice,Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war

Goddess or not, at, like nemesis, can be thought of as a kind of mechanism whereby one evil is succeeded by another. Theres a chain reaction, a cause and result. Nemesis seems cooler, more targeted and precise; at lets all hell break loose, and also is the hell that breaks loose. Categories blur in the chaos.

When I studied and taught Sophocles tragedy Oedipus the King, the stress was on hubris, irony, blindness. What wasnt emphasized is that the play was written during and is set in the midst of a plague.

The citizens of Thebes, in the tragedys opening scene, implore their wise and resourceful ruler Oedipus to save them from this disastrous illness. Oedipus, moved by their plight and confident in his own capability, promises to do exactly that. His effort to hunt down the criminal whose unpunished sin is polluting the city and causing the plague leads to Oedipuss own exposure as the source of that pollution.

But he persists in his hunt for the truth even though the truth, as every student learns, turns out to be that he himself is the polluter whom he seeks. Trump, like Oedipus, is the source of the pollution - or at the very least, a vector, a spreader, an enabler. Unlike Oedipus, the president has actively discouraged the hunt for the truth.

The final words of the tragedy are addressed by the chorus to the citizens of Thebes. Presumably the plague will be routed; the city has indeed been cleansed. In contrast, the citizens of our country keep on dying. The president removes his mask and proclaims his triumph.

Aristotle recommends in his Poetics that in the best tragedies, the pivot or reversal called peripeteia from the height of success to disaster is accompanied by some kind of knowledge anagnorisis, or recognition. Pathei mathos, sings the chorus in Aeschyluss tragedy Agamemnon: wisdom comes through suffering.

The simultaneity of Oedipuss enlightenment and his catastrophe is one of the factors that made Aristotle so admire this elegantly plotted play.

The untranslatable, chaotic force of at plays out in the cycle of reversal followed by recognition; arrogance followed by retribution. What are we supposed to think?

Whether we rejoice or mourn, whether were elated or fearful, and whatever happens in the weeks and months to come, this news that the president has COVID-19 arrives with a freight of predictability: This particular infection seems, in retrospect, if not inevitable then at least overwhelmingly likely.

Hubris: not seeing whats in front of your nose. Even as lawsuits and tell-all books have piled up, Trump has always seemed triumphantly immune. Not any more.

What happens next? Unlike Oedipus, Trump has denied that there was ever a dangerous illness in the city although Bob Woodwards book, Rage makes clear that he knew there was. Unlike Oedipus, he has refused his peoples pleas for help.

What does Oedipus learn in the course of the drama? Quite a lot. He may blame the gods or fate for his plight, but he also takes responsibility for what has happened.

[The Conversations newsletter explains whats going on with the coronavirus pandemic. Subscribe now.]

What will Covid his own personal, irrefutable experience of COVID-19 teach Trump? Humility? Compassion? Respect for expert advice? The existence of Nemesis? His own diagnosis of hubris, with a measure of at thrown in?

The answer is all too clear. Released from the hospital, Trump tweeted: Dont be afraid of Covid. Dont let it dominate your life! He also said Maybe Im immune and took off his mask when returning to the White House.

Tragedy, I tell my students, doesnt teach a lesson or preach a moral. It offers a vision. Not: dont be arrogant, prideful, hubristic. Rather: Men of Thebes, look upon Oedipus.

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'What goes around comes around,' or what Greek mythology says about Donald Trump - The Conversation US

The effort proved fruitless, but 20 years later, we're seeing the impact of having stretched the word "reality" to accommodate this popular genre, and being reminded that with television, seeing is often believing, even if what's being presented isn't precisely true.

Another reminder came this week, as news anchors such as CNN's Don Lemon and MSNBC's Brian Williams observed Monday that the president's return to the White House appeared choreographed for the cameras -- as Williams said, reflecting the "first-ever president who came from a 14-season reality-show hosting career."

Producer Mark Burnett, the mastermind behind "Survivor" and "The Apprentice," artfully built the latter around then-citizen Donald Trump, casting him as the ultimate example of jet-setting corporate success. It was a persona Trump had cultivated throughout his adult life, but one uniquely seared into the public consciousness through exposure to millions each week on NBC. (Jeff Zucker, who oversees CNN as WarnerMedia Chairman of News and Sports, was President of NBC Entertainment when the show premiered.)

As a viewer, the artifice that went into producing reality TV always bothered me. On "The Apprentice," for example, I remember Trump asking to get Joan Rivers on the phone, followed by a cut to Rivers answering and chatting with him.

How convenient that the comic somehow had a camera crew with her at the very moment when Trump decided to call.

Such criticisms, though, were generally dismissed, and critics who bothered to question those practices could easily be branded as scolds and worrywarts. Everyone knew this was just entertainment, the refrain went, and as the boilerplate disclaimers stated, the editing didn't affect the outcome.

Still, the assumption that the public was wise to the tricks of the trade always sounded unduly optimistic. That point has been driven home over the years by media coverage of "reality TV" (just putting it in quotes was another imperfect solution), chronicling the latest developments on major hits like breaking news when a closer analogy would be plot twists on a scripted soap opera.

In the early days of "reality TV," there were also a number of scandals, where producers were caught staging or manipulating situations in a questionable way.

So it went, but people grew accustomed to the genre, and nothing seemed to shake its appeal. In September, Fox's "The Masked Singer" returned, creating the appearance of a studio audience by digitally inserting crowd shots -- a case of unreality if there ever was one.

A Fox spokeswoman noted that the network acknowledged the practice in advance interviews, and included an on-air disclaimer saying that "Due to health restrictions, visuals of audience featured in this episode included virtual shots as well as shots from past seasons." Even so, many viewers expressed confusion on social media about whether the show had ignored Covid-19 protocols.

Is that a problem? Broadly speaking, perhaps not. Yet whatever the facts are about Donald Trump's history as a businessman, it seems undeniable that many people knew him as the Donald Trump they saw on "The Apprentice."

Trump has always been a showman, even before becoming a TV star or politician, and as the latest flurry of events illustrated, his presidency has exhibited an acute consciousness of how things look on TV. Yet to the extent "reality TV" has blurred the line between perception and reality, Burnett and the modern version of the genre he helped pioneer served, in a sense, as the president's too-rarely-credited running mates.

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'Reality TV' helped shape Donald Trump's image as it blurred the lines of reality - CNN

President Donald Trump has maintained a steady schedule of campaign rallies, which may have exposed him to SARS-CoV-2.

By Jon CohenOct. 5, 2020 , 12:20 PM

Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

On 2 October, the White House announced President Donald Trump received an experimental antibody treatment after a test revealed hesinfected with SARS-CoV-2. At the time, he reportedly hadmild COVID-19 symptoms, including fever and congestion, and he was transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Later, the presidents medical team confirmed he had started a course of remdesivir, an antiviral drug shown to modestly help hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Two days later, on 4 October, the team revealed Trump had been given a steroid normally reserved for severe COVID-19 cases, although his physician offered optimism about a quick recovery, even suggesting he might soon be discharged from Walter Reed.

Its a combination of two antibodies directed against a key protein of the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2. They bind to a region on the main surface spike protein that helps the virus attach to a receptor on human cells calledangiotensin-converting enzyme 2. The targeted region is dubbed the receptor binding domain. One antibody comes from a human who had recovered from a SARS-CoV-2 infection; a B cell that makes the antibody was harvested from the persons blood and the genes for the immune protein isolated and copied. The other antibody is from a mouse, which was engineered to have a human immune system, that had the spike protein injected into it.

Experiments in bothgolden hamsters and rhesus macaquesthat were intentionally infected with SARS-CoV-2 showed the cocktail could reduce viral levels and disease pathology.

Regeneron, the maker of the cocktail, earlier last week presented preliminary data from its ongoing clinical trial in people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 but were asymptomatic or, in the most extreme cases, had moderate diseasea group that would appear to mirror Trumps current condition. No serious safety concerns surfaced, andthe treatment reduced viral loadand shortened symptomatic disease in patients who did not have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the trials start. Its unclear whether the treatment can prevent severe disease, but there were hints that it might: Participants who received a placebo had more medical visits.

A separate trial is assessing the impact of the treatment on hospitalized COVID-19 patients, but Regeneron has yet to report any results from that study.

Not exactly. Trump received an 8-gram infusion of the treatment. Regenerons data showed a 2.4-gram infusion worked as well as the higher dose at reducing SARS-CoV-2 levels in people. This was widely seen as good news because monoclonals are difficult and expensive to produce, and a lower dose means more people can ultimately receive it.

Likely out of an abundance of caution by the presidents medical team, says George Yancopoulos, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Regeneron. Yancopoulos does not directly know why Trumpsphysicians chose to use 8 grams, but says the companys data indicate theres very, very limited risk that the antibodies will cause harm at either dose. The higher dose might last longer, he said, and at some time points in the companys study, Regeneron did see trends suggesting the higher dose more powerfully beats back the virusthe company used the amount of viral genetic material found with nose swabs as a proxy for SARS-CoV-2 levels in the entire body.

If I had to treat one patient, Id give the high dose, Yancopoulos says. From a societal point of view and the need to treat as many people as possible, Id give the lower dose.

The Regeneron study found the treatment only worked in people who did not have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the start of the study. It also worked best in people who had higher levels of the virus. Whether the president had those antibodies and a high viral load has not been made public. I couldnt speculate because it has to do with an individual patient, Yancopoulos says.

No. The treatment consisted of two monoclonal antibodiesmeaning each was produced by making identical copies, or clones, of an antibody gene in a single B cell. Polyclonal antibody cocktails refer to antibodies made by mixtures of B cells.

The antibodies are typically only available to people who participate in clinical trials. Trump theoretically could have enrolled in the ongoing treatment study that reported preliminary data last week, but that trial randomly assigns half the participants to receive the antibodies; the other half serves as a control group and receives infusions of an inactive placebo. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation called expanded accesstechnically known as21 CFR 312.310allows physicians to request compassionate use of experimental treatments through an investigational new drug pathway used for individual patients or for emergencies. These are designed to be used in these rare and special circumstances, Yancopoulos says. This is not the first time weve done compassionate use for these monoclonal antibodies. This is not a mechanism for widespread distribution.

Yes. Both Regeneron and Eli Lilly, which similarly reported encouraging preliminary clinical trial data last month from a single SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibody, are discussing the possibility of an EUA with FDA. Lilly reported signs that its antibody reduced the need for hospitalization, but as with Regeneron, too few participants have so far become seriously ill to reach a convincing conclusion to this critical question.

Remdesivir is an antiviral drug developed by Gilead Sciences, originally to treat the hepatitis C virus. It did not perform well against that pathogen but has been tried against Ebola and other viruses, after showing some activity in cells and animal models. The drug inhibits a viral enzyme used for replication of the pathogen. Earlier this year, it demonstrateda modest clinical benefit in a trial with hospitalized COVID-19 patients, leading FDA to grant Gilead an EUA for the drug. That EUA has since been expanded for use in patients with mild disease although its benefit in them is not clear. The drug has become widely used for COVID-19 patients despitecontinuing skepticism that it has a major clinical benefit. Because it and the monoclonal antibodies target different parts of the virus, administering them together may have a synergistic effect. One COVID-19 clinical trial is testing remdesivir and Lillys antibody, for example.

On 4 October, Sean Conley, the White House physician, said in a press conference that Trump had also been started on the steroid dexamethasone. The drug dampens the bodys immune response and can keep it from wreaking havoc in the late stages of COVID-19. It is the onlytreatment so far that has been shown to reduce the mortality in patients with severe COVID-19, but there are some indications that it may actually be harmful if given too early in the disease course. In the United Kingdoms Recovery trial there was a clear benefit for patients requiring oxygen or ventilation but not for other patients. Conley said Trump had experienced two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation. Independent doctors were quick to point out that dexamethasone can have serious side effects including agitation, paranoia, and even psychosis.

The statement released on 2 October by the presidents physician said that in addition to the antibodies, Trump has been taking zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and a daily aspirin. That wording leaves unclear whether he was taking those substances before his diagnosed infection. Notably, the statement does not indicate whetherTrump was or is taking hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial he controversially pushed as a COVID-19 treatment.

Famotidinehas been suggested to be a treatment for COVID-19, but its also a popular heartburn remedy, sold widely under the name Pepcid. A clinical trial testing it in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in New York was not able to recruit enough patients to properly evaluate its impact. The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, which initiated that trial, released a statement on 2 October citing evidence it was helpful for COVID-19 but also saying, We have yet to prove [famotidines] efficacy. The institute says its eagerly awaiting FDA approval of a trial that will evaluate whether famotidine can help people who are not hospitalized.

This story was originally published on 2 October at 9:25 p.m.

*Update, 3 October, 1:20 p.m.:Information about Trumps use of remdesivir was added to the story.

*Update, 5 October, 9:15 a.m.:Information about Trumps use of dexamethasone was added to the story.

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Update: Here's what is known about Trump's COVID-19 treatment - Science Magazine

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) The Trump campaign is rolling out Operation MAGA to keep the campaign moving forward after the president tested positive for COVID-19 last week.

WCCOs Esme Murphy spoke with the presidents eldest son earlier Monday. Donald Trump Jr. says his father is doing really well, and hes not stopped working.

When I spoke to him over the weekend, thats what he was doing. He was working, he was negotiating deals. You know, I couldnt even get through initially because he was busy doing other things! Trump Jr. said.

READ MORE: White House Physicians Claim That Trump Was 72 Hours Into Diagnosis Raises Questions About Minn. Visit

He admits his fathers COVID-19 diagnosis is a major blow to the campaign.

Its less than ideal, Trump Jr. said. Hopefully people like myself can, you know, pick up at least a little bit of that slack.

He dismisses reports that claim he and other family members are concerned about the presidents mental state after his controversial drive outside Walter Reed Medical Center, and an unusually large number of tweets mostly in capital letters.

Those reports are 100% false. I saw that on Twitter myself and I laughed, he said. Thats one of those, you know, left wing folks trying to create a controversy.

Trump Jr. denies what critics are claiming: The presidents diagnosis, and that of so many around him, shows he has wrongly and even dangerously downplayed the pandemic.

I think its ridiculous. The reality is, you know, Ive seen the protocols that go through for him. Its still a virus, just like we cant stop the flu entirely. We can take precautions, but we cant shut down the whole country again, like Joe Biden would do.

READ MORE: Paul Gazelka, Jason Lewis Tests Negative For COVID-19 After Meeting With Trump Last Week

And Trump Jr. expects to see his father back on the campaign trail soon, including possible stops in Minnesota.

Its a very important state. You know, Ive been there a bunch myself, he said. Theres obviously nothing quite like a Donald Trump in-person rally, you know, to get people going.

The president is expected to be released from the hospital and return to the White House Monday at about 6:30 p.m. CST.

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Donald Trump Jr. Dismisses Ridiculous Claims That His Father Downplayed Pandemics Severity - CBS Minnesota