As a Critical Care flight/ ground transport and 911 Paramedic, I routinely deal with the aging segment of our population. When I interact with these patients, I experience them with everything from minor ailments to the very sick. What I saw during the debate was concerning enough that had he been a patient in front of me, I would have likely advocated for him to receive an evaluation in the ER. Especially in the early minutes of the debate.
One of the first questions I would have asked people who know him would have been “what is his baseline mental status?” If the answer was that he’s normally not like this, it would have been MORE concerning, not less, as this indicates an acute change, which is potentially ominous.
More often than not I am evaluating patients who do NOT want to go to the hospital. When doing so, I have to determine whether or not they have the capacity to make their own decisions. If I believe the patient cannot, I am obligated to transport them to the ER. Determining this isn’t always easy and the last thing I want to do is force an octogenarian to go to the hospital if they do not need it. Based only on what I saw at the debate, and while I certainly would have evaluated several other factors in making my decision, after listening to him speak, my initial inclination would have been to transport. All further prehospital assessments would have been with that in mind. The bar to remove someone’s right to make their own decisions must always be high.
The bar to be able to physically fulfill the duties of the office of President is much higher. Pointing this out isn’t an attack and it certainly isn’t ageist. Stop telling me I’m a pearl clutcher.
Ignoring or downplaying what we saw because it’s your belief that it wasn’t medically concerning is one thing, whether as an informed opinion or not. I assume there are likely several kossacks who are physicians who may disagree with me and I’m ok with that. However if you are downplaying what we saw because acknowledging a potential medical issue hurts democratic chances of preventing Trump 2.0, I’m not sure I can get behind that.