Speedy recoveries after White House COVID outbreak could bolster Trump messaging on virus

The outbreak of COVID-19 cases at the White House — which many in the media claim is traceable to the Rose Garden ceremony announcing the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett — precipitated a torrent of condemnation of President Trump and his management of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

Commentators argued that the president's purportedly lax treatment of the virus — including a relative lack of mask usage, recent campaign events in which "social distancing" was not enforced, and Trump's own repeated attempts to get the U.S. economy reopened ahead of the election — had come home to roost at the White House. 

Yet the outbreak — which saw President Trump, the first lady, adviser Hope Hicks, former adviser Kellyanne Conway, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and two U.S. senators test positive for the disease — could ultimately flip the script on Trump's critics and reinforce part of the president's broader message about the COVID-19 pandemic, its long-term implications, and the need to adjust to life in a world with SARS-Cov-2. 

Trump has long fielded criticism for what pundits have claimed is an unserious approach to the coronavirus. In March, at the outset of the ongoing lockdown and mitigation measures in the U.S., the president stated that "the cure cannot be worse ... than the problem," with Trump repeatedly stating that lockdowns should not be utilized to the point that they inflict more damage than they purportedly prevent. 

At a May press conference the president bluntly admitted that reopening might indeed lead to more COVID-19 cases.

"Hopefully that won't be the case," the president said, "but it could very well be the case."

Still, he argued, "people want to go back, [and] you're going to have a problem if you don't do it. If you don't do it, you've got a very big problem."

Lockdown deaths may outstrip COVID-19 deaths

Trump's message, repeated throughout the pandemic, has underscored one of the fundamental tensions over the course of the crisis: Whether the value of severe mitigation measures such as lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, business closures, social distancing mandates and other novel public health tactics outweighs the high cost they impose. 

Some experts have argued that the implementation of the lockdowns themselves, as well as the collateral fear, trepidation and hesitancy stemming from those decisions, could result in far more deaths than the coronavirus itself will generate. In May, for instance, the World Health Organization estimated that tens of millions of children could be at risk of polio and measles due to the disruption of regularly scheduled vaccines. The United Nations in April warned that the planet could be facing multiple famines of "biblical proportions" due to the fallout from COVID-19; last month the organization reiterated that warning. 

Mental health experts, meanwhile, have been warning for months that "deaths of despair" due to increased alcoholism, drug abuse and depression are spiking sharply amid mass unemployment, anxiety and general hopelessness.

Children have also been placed at greater risk during the shutdowns. In June, world health groups warned that "lockdowns, school closures and movement restrictions have left far too many children stuck with their abusers, without the safe space that school would normally offer," as one UNICEF official put it. 

Working back toward normal has been key plank of Trump platform

Amid those grim warnings, Trump and others have been stressing the necessity of quickly getting as much of the economy reopened and as much of normal life resumed as is feasible. 

Democrats, public health officials and many commentators have stressed the unrealistic nature of that aim, arguing that the virus poses too great a risk and that the solution may in fact be tightening, not easing, lockdowns.

Many have argued that anything resembling normal life cannot resume until an effective vaccine is in place — a gamble with multiple uncertain variables. Whether scientists can develop a safe, effective vaccine in around one-seventh the normal developmental timeframe is still uncertain. Whether enough Americans will eventually obtain it is also unclear. Whether or not it will ultimately have much of an effect on a virus as infectious as SARS-Cov-2 is more uncertain still (flu vaccines, for instance, have been estimated to have an effectiveness rate as low as 40%).

Trump and others fear that a public health strategy that delays reopening in order to resolve all of these potential uncertainties could take years, a timeframe over which the secondary deaths from the virus could rise to unthinkable levels. They argue that the cost of lockdowns is too high, and that reopening can be achieved without doing greater damage, direct and indirect, than shutdowns themselves. 

Rose Garden ceremony resembled pre-COVID life

The White House outbreak could provide a key demonstration of that principle, as it illustrates a critical point espoused by President Trump and others: Normal life, for the foreseeable future, will inevitably bring with it a risk of COVID-19 infections, a chance that nevertheless poses negligible risk of death for the majority of the population. The CDC currently estimates that the COVID-19 survival rate for those under 70 years old is no lower than 99.5%; for those over 70 it's around 94.5%.

At the Rose Garden ceremony to which numerous commentators have tied the recent outbreak around the president, few attendees wore masks; little social distancing was observed; participants were observed hugging, shaking hands and generally appearing unconcerned about the risk of contracting COVID-19. 

If, as is overwhelmingly statistically likely, those infected at the Rose Garden ceremony go on to a complete recovery, the message painted by Trump and many Republicans could receive a public boost: COVID-19 is here, but normal life, for the most part, can proceed with minimal risk.

Trump himself this week appeared to be working to portray his own bout with COVID-19 in such an optimistic light. "Don' be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life," he tweeted on Monday while announcing that he would be departing Walter Reed Medical Center later in the day. 

That kind of encouraging spin on the grim business of COVID-19 could play well with voters in a month's time, though not everyone shares that optimistic outlook. Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University, argued that the public perception of the outbreak will likely work against Trump, not for him. 

"My reaction is that this is a significant setback for the Trump campaign," Abramowitz told Just the News. "First, it takes him off the campaign trail for some unknown length of time, with only about a month left until Election Day and people already voting."

"Second, and probably more importantly," he added, "it focuses even more attention on his handling of the pandemic and his irresponsible personal conduct."

A quick recovery on Trump's part, he conceded, "would be less damaging than a long and/or serious illness."

As president of the United States, Trump is, of course, receiving some of the best medical care in the world. Yet his status in the comparatively vulnerable 70-year-old-plus demographic renders him more vulnerable than younger patients — which might also mean that his recovery could function as even stronger vindication of his more confident outlook on the virus. 

Still, guidance from public health officials, including White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas, has continually stressed that vulnerable demographics face significantly heightened odds of severe COVID-19 infections. At 75 years old, and notably though not severely overweight, Trump may or may not have a protracted battle with COVID-19 ahead of him, which, though statistically unlikely to be fatal, would still take him off the campaign trail in the crucial final month of the 2020 election. 

Early signs of a quick recovery by the president, along with the public confidence expressed by his medical team, raise the prospect that the worst could be behind him. A happy outcome to a brief infection and hospitalization would give Trump a lift through the decisive, final stretch of the campaign, though whether it will be enough to keep him in the White House for another four years of course remains to be seen.