BUFFALO, N.Y. — 2 On Your Side spoke with an epidemiologist at Kaleida Health and the V.A. about how contact-tracing will work for people in President Trump's circle.
We covered a lot of ground with Dr. John Sellick on Friday. Dr. Sellick is also a Professor of Medicine at the University at Buffalo.
Dr. Sellick says President Trump is considered high risk, not only because of his age, but also because of his weight and body mass index.
Dr. Sellick says President Trump is at least in the obese range. He also says this diagnosis isn't surprising considering the President hasn't been wearing a mask with large crowds around in the video we've seen of him.
Dr. Sellick adds that you have to assume the President has a lot of exposures to people who are potentially infected with the virus. We also talked about how if you're tested after being exposed to someone who is infected, and it comes back negative, you will need to be tested again.
"The false negative rate can be, in some studies, goes as high as 30-percent. So, the fact that you test negative today doesn't really mean anything, doesn't mean much I suppose is a better way to say it, because if you fall in that 30-percent, that you get a false negative, then you're thinking you're negative, but you're really positive. The other problem is that the median incubation period of this disease is about five days and it stretches out to get that other half, stretches out to 12 to 14 days. So, the fact that the Vice President may be negative this morning, they probably rushed him to testing right away, does not mean that he's not going to turn positive later today, tomorrow, the day after, the day after, so I think there's more to come on that," Dr. Sellick said.
As far as contact tracing goes, Dr. Sellick says because there are so many possible exposures, we may never know who infected the President.
With the President experiencing minor symptoms, the White House announced Friday afternoon that his campaign events where he was scheduled to appear in-person are going to be all virtual or postponed for now.
We also spoke with Peter Yacobucci. He is a political science professor at SUNY Buffalo State. He wasn't surprised about the news based on the President not wearing a mask at so many campaign events.
Yacobucci says everything moving forward with the campaign depends on how the President is feeling.
"If he can get over that quickly, as many people that get the virus do, then the debate probably will go off as it normally has. However, this does affect the President's ability to campaign. As I stated before, he has resumed his campaign schedule, he has been holding his rallies, and those certainly are off the table at least for the seven days to ten days. Whether he'd be able to resume, you know, come mid-October, we'll have to see," Yacobucci said. "The other thing is if he can not go out, one of the things the President always does when he does these campaign swings is he always has private fundraisers that raise millions of dollars for his campaign. His campaign is badly being outspent by Joe Biden's campaign right now. Joe Biden has raised an incredible amount of money in the last two months, and President Trump simply hasn't."
But what about his duties as Commander-In-Chief? What happens if he is too sick to do his job?
Yacobucci says there are two possible scenarios if President Trump has the Vice President take over his duties temporarily. That's happened before when Presidents have gotten colonoscopies. He can tell everyone by letter, but if he's too sick to be able to send that letter request over, we talked about what would happen.
"The Vice President and the majority of the cabinet would send a request over to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate to temporarily relieve the President of their duties. Again, the Vice President would move up and be acting President," Yacobucci said.