Ben Carson Says Cocktail Drug Treatment for COVID-19 'Saved His Life'

Coronavirus has been making its way through the mess of people in Donald Trump’s orbit, infecting a host of White House staffers, Melania Trump, the president himself, and even one his sons, Donald Trump Jr.

Department of Housing Secretary Ben Carson is another member of the president’s posse who was recently diagnosed with COVID-19.

Now Carson has revealed that he suffered from an especially serious case of the virus, and in a Facebook post on Friday attributed the fact that he’s still alive to getting special treatment with the help of the president.

It sounds like Carson was in pretty bad shape. From his Facebook:

I was extremely sick and initially took Oleander 4X with dramatic improvement. However, I have several co-morbidities and after a brief period when I only experienced minor discomfort, the symptoms accelerated and I became desperately ill. President Trump was following my condition and cleared me for the monoclonal antibody therapy that he had previously received, which I am convinced saved my life.

Carson says that he believes he’s now “out of the woods” and that he was blessed to receive some of the best treatment in the world.

“I am hopeful that we can stop playing politics with medicine and instead combine our efforts and goodwill for the good of all people,” the former neurosurgeon ironically added, given that Trump has played politics with COVID-19 from the very beginning of the pandemic.

Luckily the cocktail antibody drug Regeneron, which was reported as the treatment Trump received when he was hospitalized last month with COVID-19, was just this weekend granted emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration to treat the virus in people 12 and older, reports the Washington Post.

The authorization of Regeneron and the finalizing of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna hopefully means that soon Americans other than those in the Trump orbit will have the benefit of better options for treatment and protection from the novel coronavirus.

More than 255,000 Americans and counting have died from the virus.

But the Trump administration appears to be roadblocking efforts by President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming team to coordinate a COVID-19 response during the transition period, likely because of Trump’s continuing refusal to concede the election.

“I have been informed that I should not be saying anything that is confidential to anybody, including anybody that’s not a part of the administration,” chief advisor of Operation Warp Speed Dr. Moncef Slaoui said to NBC on Sunday of having no contact with the Biden transition team about vaccine distribution plans.