It was the cold medications!
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Did Cold Medications Affect Biden's Debate Performance?
Early last week, Donald Trump suggested that Joe Biden would be on performance-enhancing drugsopens in a new tab or window for the presidential debate and demanded a drug test. The claim was widely laughed off as Trumpaganda, creating another fact-free conspiratorial haze. Still, perhaps Trump was onto something. The country is struggling to reconcile Biden's cognitive impairment during the debate with his obvious recovery well into the night and the next day.
The most probable explanation for this transient period of cognitive impairment in an older person with a cold is a side effect of cold medications. If this is so, the hand-wringing should cease, and we should use the debate as a reminder of how common such reactions are rather than an indication that the president is chronically debilitated.
In recent weeks, Biden has made several high-profile public appearances on the world stage. He commemorated the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, attended press briefings at the G7 Summit in Italy, and engaged with the public and world leaders. Journalists who have been beside Biden closely these past few weeks reported no such impairment, aligning with bullish sentiment from the Biden debate prep team. Everyone would have noticed if Biden exhibited even a fraction of what he displayed at the debate.
During the debate, particularly in the first half, Biden trailed off into odd digressions unrelated to the moderators' questions, often mumbling almost inaudibly. This performance was not just worse than the trivial gaffes we've come to expect from Biden; it appeared to indicate a clinical problem.
For instance, he commented, "...we finally beat Medicare," when responding to a question about inflation.
Trump replied, "I don't even know what he just said in that last sentence, and I don't think he does either."
In response to a question about abortion, Biden hesitatingly offered jumbled canned lines about immigration while staring dazed, mouth agape during breaks. This is not the president we have seen in the last 3 years or even the last few weeks.
As time passed, the fog lifted. He improved throughout the debate and later in the evening, engaging with people far into the night. The next day, he delivered a fiery speech in North Carolina without missing a beat. The short half-life of many of these drugs could explain Biden's resilient post-debate appearances.
Biden's symptoms appeared consistent with someone suffering from temporary drug-induced cognitive impairment. We now know he had a bad coldopens in a new tab or window during the debate. Most people believe common over-the-counter cold medications such as DayQuil, Tylenol, or Advil to be harmless. While generally well tolerated, these medications have well-documented side effects and can cause reduced alertness, diminished attention, poor memory, and reduced reaction time, especially in older individuals. These impairments are transitory but can appear consequential and alarming. Every experienced clinician has seen this effect thousands of times. If anti-cold medications were combined with other drugs, the risks could increase even more.
Upon hearing our perspective, Yale professor of psychiatry Marshal Mandelkern, MD, PhD, concurred: "As a clinician, when someone presents with 'altered mental status' I would always think of the possibility of drug ingestion as a cause. This is not only common, it is usually the most benign explanation for a change in mental state."
Pundits were quick to pile on Biden's poor performance with amateur diagnoses of permanently diminished mental capacity. Yet, calls for Biden to step down would be premature if the performance resulted from an adverse drug effect. The remedy is to ensure the president avoids these drugs and uses the experience as a teachable moment for seniors nationwide. Age may be an issue, but perhaps it is solely about susceptibility to drug effects.
As great as the coffee at Waffle House -- where Biden stopped post-debateopens in a new tab or window -- is, we believe the more likely reason for his continued improvement was that the cold medications he may have taken started wearing off. Trump misleads the American public in many areas, but one area where he may have inadvertently been correct was the role drugs played in Biden's debate performance.
We need to know if President Biden took cold medications before the debate. His doctors should assess the role they may have played. How the American people assess the debate hinges on the answer. It would be tragic to magnify the meaning of an ill-timed adverse drug effect -- and potentially have it change the course of history.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, DBA, MBA, is the Lester Crown Professor of Leadership Practice and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Harlan Krumholz, MD, SM, is the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine, a cardiologist, and the director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. He is also a member of the MedPage Today editorial board, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Possible, I suppose. I just hope he doesn't get the sniffles when something serious is happening.
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@jon-nyc said in It was the cold medications!:
One guy in a wheelchair, the other in handcuffs.
All you need is a midget and the fantasy is complete
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Since Fanni's fanny is in hot water, half of Smith's charges look like they just went bye-bye and there may have to be a SCOTUS ruling on his legitimacy, and we all know Bragg's charges are BS...I think the majority of the American people are quickly coming to the conclusion that since the Dems lie so baldly and so badly about Biden, the charges against Trump are simply political lawfare.
Which would be a good thing and possibly win him the Whitehouse. And as a side benefit, maybe cut the head off of the lawfare snake for this generation.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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He definitely should not have been operating heavy machinery. Seriously, he should have manufactured a reason to delay the debate.
@kluurs said in It was the cold medications!:
He definitely should not have been operating heavy machinery. Seriously, he should have manufactured a reason to delay the debate.
I don't think he could, for a couple of reasons...
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Trump said he would debate any time, anywhere, with pretty much your rules. Biden took him up on it. If Biden had backed out, after taking off a week for prep by 16 advisors, the optics would have been horrible and Trump would have hammered him.
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This was the earliest debate in modern times. I think Biden's campaign was well aware of his cognitive decline. It's been quite evident for months. I think they wanted to get ahead of any sharp drop-offs in mental acuity, as that's what happens in those type patients...They stay at a certain level for months and then one morning they've dropped off the table and are at another permanent level.
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Since Fanni's fanny is in hot water, half of Smith's charges look like they just went bye-bye and there may have to be a SCOTUS ruling on his legitimacy, and we all know Bragg's charges are BS...I think the majority of the American people are quickly coming to the conclusion that since the Dems lie so baldly and so badly about Biden, the charges against Trump are simply political lawfare.
Which would be a good thing and possibly win him the Whitehouse. And as a side benefit, maybe cut the head off of the lawfare snake for this generation.
@Jolly said in It was the cold medications!:
I think the majority of the American people are quickly coming to the conclusion that since the Dems lie so baldly and so badly about Biden, the charges against Trump are simply political lawfare.
His messaging works with magats and the dim, most people I know are able to make distinctions between the three cases.
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@Jolly said in It was the cold medications!:
I think the majority of the American people are quickly coming to the conclusion that since the Dems lie so baldly and so badly about Biden, the charges against Trump are simply political lawfare.
His messaging works with magats and the dim, most people I know are able to make distinctions between the three cases.
@jon-nyc said in It was the cold medications!:
@Jolly said in It was the cold medications!:
I think the majority of the American people are quickly coming to the conclusion that since the Dems lie so baldly and so badly about Biden, the charges against Trump are simply political lawfare.
His messaging works with magats and the dim, most people I know are able to make distinctions between the three cases.
We've got a pretty definitive poll coming up on November 5th.
Let's see how that one works out...
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Lawfare seems to be a neologism that doesn't have a strict definition, but everybody understands that the motivation behind these prosecutions is political, as were the creative and novel uses of certain statutes to prosecute 100s of the January 6 rioters, which the Supreme Court recently batted back.
Where people differ is in 1) their willingness to say out loud that the motivations are political and 2) their belief in the justified righteousness of those political motivations.
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Everybody understands that what Trump and his band of credulous idiots. did after the election was unprecedented in scale and scope and laws were broken.
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
-Cormac McCarthy -
Everybody understands that what Trump and his band of credulous idiots. did after the election was unprecedented in scale and scope and laws were broken.
@jon-nyc said in It was the cold medications!:
Everybody understands that what Trump and his band of credulous idiots. did after the election was unprecedented in scale and scope and laws were broken.
And yet just last week, the supreme court didn't agree that the rioters broke the most severe laws they were charged with breaking. You must be furious with the supreme court for daring to apply rational thought to bloodthirsty TDS.
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@jon-nyc said in It was the cold medications!:
Everybody understands that what Trump and his band of credulous idiots. did after the election was unprecedented in scale and scope and laws were broken.
And yet just last week, the supreme court didn't agree that the rioters broke the most severe laws they were charged with breaking. You must be furious with the supreme court for daring to apply rational thought to bloodthirsty TDS.
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Everybody understands that what Trump and his band of credulous idiots. did after the election was unprecedented in scale and scope and laws were broken.
@jon-nyc said in It was the cold medications!:
Everybody understands that what Trump and his band of credulous idiots. did after the election was unprecedented in scale and scope and laws were broken.
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I have a new theory. I think they accidentally switched Joe’s medicine with Hunter’s…
