"Here's the best part: so that is a - that timeline is really critical. And as you point out, that - the follow-up question was, 'Are you sure it was 72 hours?' And the doctor said, 'Yeah, it was 72 hours.' So this is very different and critically important in terms of how this spreading event, the spread of the virus likely occurred here. Sounds like they tried to give the President this experimental therapy at the White House under compassionate use, which means they would have had to order that," Gupta said.
Gupta continued, "They would have had to go through the process that he got it Thursday morning, but the plans were in effect probably at least a day earlier. Maybe even longer. So there is a lot about this that is very, very upsetting in terms of how this was handled. Not to mention that the doctors didn't tell us had the president ever been on oxygen. How low did his oxygen go? Does he have any evidence of lung damage? Just evaded these questions. Couldn't even tell us how high his fever was at any given point. So if the question is how is he going to do? We just simply got very evasive answers and a very concerning timeline."
Whitfield then asked Gupta to expand on the issue of oxygen use.
"What kind of difference might it make for a patient, particularly the President, if he was getting oxygen artificially and if he's no longer?" Whitfield asked. "I mean, how important was that exchange to you?"
"It was really important," Sanjay answered. "I'm a doctor. I talk to patients all the time and talk to their families. There's a certain precision of speech. You want to give the details here. He clearly was being evasive. He just wouldn't answer the question. He's not on oxygen right now, he kept saying. Maybe not over the last 24 hours. It was just a strangely evasive thing, but it's relevant because if someone had required oxygen, it gives some indication of how significant this infection was - the impact it's having on their lungs."
Gupta expanded, "It's great, if it's true and hard to know what is true, what is not right now. If it's true he's no longer on oxygen, that's also important information to have, but there was a degree of trying to understand, what is the impact this disease has had on the president? We don't know. When did the president actually develop this disease? It's still unclear. It seemed like he was diagnosed as early as Wednesday. So all these thing goes into how you would plan the possible care, anticipate the recovery of somebody and either the doctors don't know all of this or they were purposely being misleading there. Answering the question, 'Hey, was the president ever on oxygen?' and saying over and over again, 'The president isn't on oxygen now.' It's not an answer to the question. And it's a medically relevant question."
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