President Trump isn’t the first sitting president to contract a potentially deadly virus in the middle of a pandemic: In April 1919, former President Woodrow Wilson became ill with the 1918 flu when he was in Paris.
For Wilson, the virus "took its toll on him," Markel said. "That can have neurologic and long-term complications. And he was already at the time traveling and living on a train and giving five to 10 speeches a day. That's not healthy."
. He lost his appetite, his asthma grew worse and he complained of unrelenting headaches, he added. He would later have a bad stroke.Many infectious disease experts and medical historians have drawn other parallels between 1918 and today. Schools and businesses were also closed and infected people were quarantined a century ago. People were also resistant to wearing face masks,Several U.S. cities implemented mandates, describing them as a symbol of "wartime patriotism.
The federal government played a very small role in American public health during that era, he said. Unlike today, there was no CDC or national public health department. The Food and Drug Administration existed, but it consisted of a very small group of men. Unlike today, Wilson did not get sick during his reelection, Markel said. He said the public needs to know "how healthy or how not healthy" Trump is before the election on Nov. 3.
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