Fox News announced today that President Trump, a COVID-19 patient since (at least) last Thursday night, will undergo a medical evaluation on conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show tonight at 8 p.m. ET. The evaluation will be performed by Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center, frequent contributor to Fox News, and author of the articles “The Death of the Bedside Manner: ObamaCare Is Speeding the Decline in the Quality of Medical Practice” and “Afraid of the bird flu? The worse virus is fear.”
It’s unclear what Siegel’s exam will entail, though it seems fair to expect he’ll echo some of the vitals presented by Sean Conley, the White House physician, in his latest briefing. Medical experts warn, however, that Trump’s pulse, blood pressure, and oxygen readings are only “momentary snapshots” of his condition, and a more thorough evaluation would chart his oxygen levels while walking and talking, among other things.
It remains unclear, too, if Trump remains on dexamethasone, a powerful steroid that might make him feel better than he is. Conley has written that Trump has “completed his course of therapy for COVID-19,” but does not mention particular medications. CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, noted that the typical course for dexamethasone is ten days, which Trump has not yet reached, according to Conley’s timeline. Gupta also noted that when people discontinue use of dexamethasone, they sometimes experience a resurgence of symptoms. It’s possible Siegel will address these issues on Tucker Carlson’s show tonight, but I’m envisioning something closer to when Kim Kardashian had her family doctor X-ray her butt to prove it’s real.
