"President Trump has boasted that the treatment he has received for COVID-19 has cured him of the disease and made him feel better than ever. It’s very difficult to know whether that’s true, given how little we know about his condition, how unreliable his health reports have been and how experimental his course of treatment is. But we do know that these drugs often come with considerable side effects — side effects that could change the behavior of the leader of the free world.
In particular, one of the drugs he has been given, dexamethasone, can cause psychiatric side effects, which has raised concerns. Of course, just because side effects could affect behavior doesn’t mean they are doing so.
“We need to exercise caution in attributing any particular form of behavior to side effects of medication,” said Edward Shorter, a medical historian at the University of Toronto. “Trump has such a long history of bizarre and erratic behavior that the latest manifestation of it need not be a medication side effect at all.”
Rather than jumping to conclusions, it’s helpful to take a step back and consider what the science tells us about these therapeutics. Let’s run through the three major drugs doctors have prescribed to Trump and what their side effects might be."
