During a Monday morning interview on MSNBC, Dr. Natalie Azar and guest host Chris Jansing downplayed concerns over Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis.
“Pneumonia is a kind of general term, though isn’t it?,” posed Jansing. “There’s different kinds and severities of pneumonia.”
“Absolutely, yes,” responded Azar. “Pneumonia, very specifically, means an infection of the lung tissue. Over 30 different organisms can cause pneumonia, viruses, bacteria, fungi.”
Jansing then referenced two people who were interviewed on MSNBC earlier that morning, both of whom had recently been diagnosed with pneumonia.
“One was in bed for a week, the other was sort of up and walking around,” she stated before Azar picked up her lead.
“Exactly, so we don’t know exactly what kind of pneumonia she was diagnosed with,” the doctor explained to the audience. “We were given this generic term, but some types, we give them a euphemism — walking pneumonia which is a non-medical term — refers to a mild kind of pneumonia, where you can go to work, school, and continue your activities, but you have coughing and you don’t feel well and you feel fatigued and you feel tired.”
“And we know it was her coughing, according to her campaign, that led her to the doctor that led to this diagnosis,” Jansing added. “How serious can pneumonia be for any 68-year-old?”
“The vast majority of people who are considered otherwise healthy, including a 68-year-old woman, without a past medical history, pneumonia should not be that serious,” Azar answered.
“As we say with most infectious diseases, much older immuno-compromised, much younger, we worry about those populations, but kind of in the middle of the bell curve, we would not anticipate any major complications from a diagnose of pneumonia, especially in light of the fact that she’s being treated.”