The thing about steroids is that they do multiple things at once. This is true for most drugs, but it really does seem to be ESPECIALLY true of steroids.
1. They reduce inflammation. 2. They suppress your immune system.
They're really good at both of these things and are in fact used for both of these clinically. Occasionally you want to do both at once!
However, if someone is sick with a virus, the "suppress the immune system" response is more likely to be a bug than a feature. (Not always, but a lot of the time.)
I assume this is why they concluded that dexamethasone is super useful for people who've hit a certain level of fucked-up-by-covid degree of sick, but harmful for the people who are less sick.
Less sick: you want your immune system working at full power. You do not want to tell it to take the afternoon off.
More sick: inflammation is bad enough you want to bring the anti-inflammatory Big Guns.
I mean, there is also a situation called a cytokine storm (this is apparently what killed a lot of the flu victims in 1918 and is happening with some covid patients) where your immune system goes absolutely berserk and tries to kill you with massive inflammation.
And that's one of the times that the fact that steroids BOTH reduce inflammation AND suppress your immune system is a huge, huge plus.
Anyway, if Trump is only as sick as they're telling us he is, he probably shouldn't be on dexamethasone.
There are kind of two possible explanations for a lot of what we've been hearing.
The obvious explanation is that he's a lot sicker than they're saying.
But, he may also be experiencing the downside of presidential health care: overtreatment.
The thing about boutique health care is that doctors want to look like they're doing SOMEthing, and so sometimes they'll give you treatments that won't help and might hurt.
Americans tend to assume that the newest and most expensive treatments are also the best treatments. This is pretty regularly not the case. I think this is largely the result of having to fight insurers so frequently.
Anyway. When Ronald Reagan was shot, he was taken to the nearest ER because there wasn't time to take him anywhere else, and I've read some analysis of the fact that this is probably why he survived: he got exactly the same care as any other gunshot victim.
Anyway, if you're going to give someone a very expensive placebo, don't give them steroids, steroids if you don't actually need them will FUCK YOU RIGHT UP.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I forgot to add a description to the gif. It's a guy skateboarding up to a barrier, trying to jump over it to land on the skateboard again, and fucking it up.
Oh man I really should have searched for "Wile E Coyote" when I was trying to find an appropriate gif.
I am literally begging everyone in Minnesota to flip their ballot over and vote for Paul Thissen. Michelle MacDonald is a far-right Bible-prop-using drunk-driving frivolous-lawsuit-filing disaster of a candidate.
Her past shenanigans involve a non-profit that spent years mostly appearing to exist as a PR wing for a woman who kidnapped and hid her children as part of a child custody dispute while pretending they were missing.
Here's what I wrote about her in 2014, when she got banned from the Republican Booth at the State Fair:
One of his events on Wednesday was a small, intimate house party that people paid $200,000/head to attend, and I know I keep hammering on this, but. This was the VERY DEFINITION of a high-risk event even if know one there knew they were sick.
Do I care about the well-being of a bunch of Trump supporters who are so loaded they dropped $200K to spend an hour palling around with the guy? Not really. I care about their housekeepers and nannies and gardeners. I care about their kids and the people teaching their kids.
I heard a news story on NPR this afternoon about a coal mine owner who has spent years lobbying against restrictions on how much dust miners can inhale who has now developed black lung disease.
There are people who make bad decisions for themselves and pay the price. And it sucks and if it's someone I know and like, I'll be very sad.
But there are also people who make bad decisions for everyone around them. Who make it clear they don't give a flying fuck what happens to the people around them. And yes: we all have a different response to THOSE chickens coming home to roost.
I mean, I will note that Scott is not wrong. "Will you condemn white supremacy" isn't even a slow, easy pitch over home plate. It's putting a ball on a tee for you to swing at.
This is an invitation to look straight into the camera and say, "Of course I condemn white supremacy. I believe that all men and women are created equal. If that's not something you can get behind, you're un-American and a bad person."