Analyzing Trump's illness is humbling for media's med teams

NEW YORK (AP) — Here's an assignment to humble even the most confident doctor: Assess a patient's condition before millions of people without being able to examine him or see a complete medical chart.

That, in effect, is what medical experts at news organizations have been asked to do since President Donald Trump revealed Friday that he had tested positive for COVID-19.

They have a fine line to walk, needing to decide what level of speculation — if any — that they’re comfortable with, how much to read into medications the president has been prescribed and how to explain the course of a virus so new that it still confounds the people who study it.

“You try to put the pieces of the puzzle together,” said CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who logged hours comparable to his residency days in the wake of Trump's announcement.

A second or third opinion is only a click away. The question of whether Trump developed COVID 19-related pneumonia is one example of how media experts have differed despite access to the same information.

All would like to see images of Trump's lungs, but they haven't been made available. Dr. Vin Gupta (no relation to Sanjay), a pulmonologist who treats coronavirus patients and reports for NBC News, is confident that Trump has pneumonia because the president has had shortness of breath, low oxygen levels in his blood and has COVID-19.

CBS News' Dr. John LaPook is less definitive, but believes that's the case “because if he had a chest x-ray and it was normal, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.”

But Dr. Jen Ashton, ABC News' chief medical correspondent, said that would be “quintessential speculation” because the president's medical team hasn't made that diagnosis publicly. His doctors said there were some pulmonary findings on...