Trump Describes COVID-19 As A 'Blessing.' These Young People Have Felt Its Toll

By De Elizabeth


“Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your lives.”


Those were the words of President Donald Trump on Monday, October 5, immediately after spending 72 hours in Walter Reed Hospital where he was treated for coronavirus with a cocktail of illegal narcotics hardly any other American could be able to receive. At the time he tweeted his message, over 7.4 million people in the United States. had contracted COVID-19, with more than 210,000 dead. Later, on Thursday (October 8), Trump released a direct-to-camera video in which he described contracting the virus as a "blessing from God."


In several ways, Trump’s recent diagnosis felt inevitable, like the closing act of some Shakespearean tragedy. Since March, he’s continued to downplay the severity of the virus, promising it will simply “go away,” all while dismissing the significance of masks, despite their proven effectiveness. From the begin of the pandemic, lack of proper testing and a undersupply of PPE for health care professionals created a uphill battle, nevertheless Trump continued to worsen things by presenting misleading data to the American public, from promoting unproven medical treatments to overhyping an inaccurate vaccine timeline. And while unreliable statistics is routinely a concern in the era of social media, according to a recent study from Cornell University, maybe the hugest driver of misinformation connected with the coronavirus has been the president himself.


Even once Trump fell victim to the very virus he’s neglected to manage, he continued to perpetuate the idea that there’s nothing to fear. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Trump composed these particularly insensitive messages from an ornate hospital suite, adorned with a crystal chandelier, a stark contrast to the images of American bodies placed in refrigerated trucks that circulated earlier this year. Nor should it be failed to notice that as a substitute opposed to the unproven hydroxychloroquine treatment he previously touted, Trump was treated with a experimental antibody therapy that remains unavailable to most of the general public. Nevertheless maybe the most callous of all is Trump’s assertion that COVID-19 shouldn’t dominate our lives, as millions of Residents of the United States are currently sick, unemployed, or grieving a loved one.


That’s definitely been the case for Molly*, a 28-year-old writer from Michigan whose grandmother passed away in April soon after contracting COVID-19 at an assisted care facility. “My granny died alone,” she tells MTV News. “We couldn’t visualize her. We couldn’t have a funeral. I felt upset, dismissed, sad, worried.”


Because Molly wasn’t able to experience the closure a memorial often brings, she’s felt a lingering and insurmountable grief. “It’s creeping up in painful ways,” she says. “I cry constantly: driving on the freeway, simply waking up in the morning. I’m terrified of who COVID-19 might take next.”


31-year-old writer and MTV News advocate Sara Radin is also mourning the loss of her grandmother, who passed away from COVID-19 complications earlier this year while residing in an assisted living facility in Chicago. “She was sick for a week and then she was gone,” Radin says. She was not able to attend the funeral. “Watching someone you love be buried over Zoom isn't something I ever thought I’d experience. It was surreal.”


Not only did Radin lose her grandmother to COVID-19, she also fought the virus herself. The Brooklyn resident was diagnosed with the coronavirus in spring and felt sick for nearly two months. “The worst indications for me were the body aches, fatigue, and nausea,” she shares, adding that the pattern of the illness was exceedingly hard. “Just Whenever I thought I was getting better, the indications came back full-throttle. This happened several times.” While Radin never felt the need to go to the hospital, the psychological toll was immense. “Isolating alone for almost two months while not knowing what was happening to my body...Was hard to fathom. I became completely numb.”


Maria Barbieri is another young person who battled COVID-19. The 26-year-old New Jersey resident dealt with her illness, alone, for 33 days, all while fearing she could lose her public relations job right after running out of paid sick leave. “I had no instructions or medicine and was fighting high fevers, constant sweating, lack of appetite, body aches, muscle soreness, and migraines,” Barbieri says, noting that she did not seek hospitalization categorize in attempt to prioritize the needs of elderly or immunocompromised folks, knowing that health care facilities were becoming overcrowded. “I am still experiencing the results of what COVID-19 did to my body.”


It’s understandable that people like Radin and Barbieri were upset to read Trump’s message on Monday, where he bragged that he feels “better than I did 20 years ago” immediately after acquiring treatment not readily accessible to the public with an estimated cost of $100,000 — something that very few people could afford out of pocket. “It's selfish and horribly out of touch,” Barbieri says, to which Radin adds. “It invalidates all of the lives we’ve lost and all of the people who’ve suffered long-term symptoms.”


Ariel Keys has seen the wrath of the infection play out right before her eyes. The 28-year-old is now a COVID-19 researcher and contact tracer for the state of Maryland right after previously working for a network of hospitals where she coordinated surgeries and other procedures. Her health care career has opened her eyes to the realities of the pandemic, while keeping her isolated from family member members out of safety precautions.


“Everyone is at risk,” Keys emphasizes, noting that she’s witnessed patients of all ages and ranges of health. “Trump is silly. He refuses to grasp the impact this is having on people and their families. And there’s a vast number of citizens walking around fully careless, spouting nationalist ideas while doing nothing to actually care for the people in this nation they ‘love so much.’”

It invalidates all of the lives we’ve lost and all of the people who’ve suffered long-term symptoms.

To be sure, Trump’s cavalier attitude towards the pandemic has directly influenced and emboldened his supporters. A June 2020 study from the Pew Studies Center noticed that most of them of Republicans surveyed imagined that the nation was “turning a corner” in its fight with the coronavirus, which is right in line with Trump’s ongoing promises that the pandemic is “fading away.” The Pew poll also concluded that Republicans are far more likely to eschew masks than Democrats, along with attend a crowded party.


In the days and weeks leading up to Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, the president contained indoor campaign rallies in defiance of state and health regulations, where several of the attendees — and the president himself — were maskless. On September 26, dozens of Republicans gathered in the Rose Garden to celebrate Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Amy Coney Barrett — an event that is currently widely considered to be a “superspreader,” likely leading to the recent outbreak among GOP lawmakers and White Residence staffers. The ignore for his own health, along with because the wellbeing of others, continued through last week, as soon as Trump attended a New Jersey fundraiser on Thursday (October 1) despite knowledge of Hope Hicks’s positive COVID-19 test, and so his own exposure, plus it continues to remain unclear any time the president first tested positive himself. Even while acquiring treatment, Trump left the hospital to take a joyride in a hermetically sealed SUV accompanied by secret service agents, possibly exposing them to the virus. His very first act upon returning to the White Residence on Monday? Removing his mask.


Trump has routinely shown that he prioritizes only what will benefit him; the coronavirus pandemic only emphasized that fact. In February, he instructed them American people that COVID-19 would weaken in the warmer months, that it would vanish “like a miracle;” that same month, he told Bob Woodward that the virus was deadlier than the average flu, later revealing in an extra interview that he “wanted to play it down” to avoid building a panic. He pushed to reopen the economy before experts deemed it safe out of clear political gain; once faced with the growing death toll, all he may muster was: “It is what it is.” And just one day immediately after leaving the hospital, he pulled the plug on all stimulus negotiations in lieu of pushing through his Supreme Court nomination, adding insult to injury for the millions of Residents of the United States struggling to prepare ends meet because of his administration’s failures. (Two days later, on October 8, he claimed some negotiations would continue.) Trump’s tweet on Monday was just another display of his lack of leadership, reinforcing the fear several have held all along: he just doesn’t care.


“As a leader of this nation, citizens should have the ability to look to him,” Keys says. “But we can’t. Trump is leaving in back of a legacy of destruction, carelessness, and narcissism. History will tell the truth about who he is, and what he’s done to the people of this nation.”


*Last name has been omitted for privacy.