Trump Tweets 'Don’t Be Afraid of COVID' While the Disease Runs Wild in the White House

President Trump is heading back to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. And he’s trying to argue that the deadly pandemic sweeping the country is nothing to be afraid of.

Trump will depart from the military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, at 6:30 p.m. Monday, he wrote on Twitter Monday afternoon.

But in one of the most outlandish and brazenly irresponsible tweets of his presidency — which is saying something — Trump also urged Americans not to fear the disease that medical experts say still stands a chance of killing him. The pandemic has already killed over 200,000 Americans.

“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” Trump tweeted. “Don’t let it dominate your life.”

The true state of the president’s health remains shrouded in mystery and misinformation, despite his departure from the hospital after a three-day stay. Trump’s doctors have given evasive, optimistic answers, even though the concrete details of his treatment suggest his condition may be serious. Trump has recast himself as an expert on COVID since his diagnosis was announced Friday.

Trump wrote Monday that he’s “feeling really good!,” and took credit for the advances in medical care that have been achieved over the past several months of the pandemic.

“We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!,” Trump wrote.

Trump has been demanding to return to the White House out of concern that being cooped up in the hospital “makes him look weak,” CNN reported earlier, citing unnamed sources.

Trump has received a battery of medication, including an experimental antibody cocktail that isn’t even yet approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, and a powerful steroid called dexamethasone that’s normally reserved for the most serious COVID cases. Trump will receive a fourth dose of a drug called remdesivir later Monday, before getting a fifth and final dose at the White House.

Trump’s doctors, who have danced around providing direct answers at evasive press conferences since Trump’s diagnosis, insisted Trump is ready to go home on Monday. But they also raised a note of caution.

“He may not be entirely out of the woods yet,” said White House physician Sean Conley. He referred to Trump’s mixture of medicines as “uncharted territory,” saying it’s hard to know exactly how anyone would react.

Conley said the next week or so would be determinative for Trump.

“If we can get through to Monday, with him remaining the same or improving, then we will all take that big sigh of relief,” Conley said.

Conley refused to either endorse or dispute the president’s assertion that nobody should fear the coronavirus.

Asked about Trump’s earlier tweet, Conley demurred.

“I’m not going to get into what the president says,” Conley said.