“Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your lives.”

Those were the words of President Donald Trump on Monday, October 5, after spending 72 hours in Walter Reed Hospital where he was treated for coronavirus with a cocktail of drugs hardly any other American would be able to receive. At the time he tweeted his message, over 7.4 million people in the United States. had contracted COVID-19, with more than 210,000 dead. Later, on Wednesday (October 7), Trump released a direct-to-camera video in which he described contracting the virus as a "blessing from God."

In many ways, Trump’s recent diagnosis felt inevitable, like the closing act of some Shakespearean tragedy. Since March, he’s continued to downplay the severity of the virus, promising it will simply “go away,” all while dismissing the importance of masks, despite their proven effectiveness. From the start of the pandemic, lack of proper testing and an undersupply of PPE for health care professionals created an uphill battle, but Trump continued to worsen things by presenting misleading information to the American public, from promoting unproven medical treatments to overhyping an inaccurate vaccine timeline. And while unreliable information is always a concern in the era of social media, according to a recent study from Cornell University, perhaps the largest driver of misinformation regarding the coronavirus has been the president himself.