President Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday night, staging a defiant, made-for-television moment in which he ripped off his face mask and then urged the nation to put aside the risks of the deadly coronavirus that has swept through his own staff and sent him to the hospital for three days.

Just hours after his press secretary and two more aides tested positive, making the White House the leading coronavirus hot spot in the nation’s capital, Trump again dismissed the pandemic that has killed 210,000 people in the US, telling Americans “don’t be afraid of it” and saying that he felt “better than 20 years ago”.

The words and visuals were only the latest ways Trump has undermined public health experts trying to persuade Americans to take the pandemic seriously. Even afflicted by the disease himself, the President who has wrongly predicted that it would simply disappear appeared unchastened as he pressed America to reopen and made no effort to promote precautions.

“We’re going back to work. We’re going to be out front,” Trump said in a video shot immediately after his return and then posted online. “As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there’s danger to it, but I had to do it. I stood out front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. And I know there’s a risk, there’s a danger, but that’s okay. And now I’m better and maybe I’m immune, I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives.”

Later in a series of tweets, Trump played down the pandemic again, comparing it to the flu in a tweet on Tuesday, and Twitter Inc responded by putting a warning label on the tweet, saying the post included potentially misleading information.

“Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” Trump tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Facebook Inc removed a similar post by Trump, according to CNN.

Trump is doing “extremely well” and reporting no symptoms of Covid-19, his doctor said in a statement on Tuesday.

Scientists, ethicists and doctors were outraged by the President’s comments.

“I am struggling for words — this is crazy,” said Harald Schmidt, assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It is just utterly irresponsible.”

Dr William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical School, called the President’s message “dangerous” because it encouraged his followers to ignore basic recommendations to keep themselves safe.

The regret-nothing approach demonstrated that the President intended no pivot in his handling of the pandemic despite his own medical crisis. The message, in effect, was that Americans should live their lives and not worry about catching the virus because “we have the best medicines in the world”, never mind that he has had access to experimental treatment and high-quality health care not available to most people.

Trump’s behaviour has also seriously undermined his campaign advisers, who had seen a potential opportunity. If Trump recovered quickly from his bout with the coronavirus and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset. The health crisis, one campaign official said, was a setback in a re-election campaign that polls have shown him losing for months, but also a chance to demonstrate a new stance toward the virus that might win over some voters.

Trump pressured his doctors to release him from Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in suburban Maryland, but it did not indicate that he had escaped jeopardy, only that he could be treated at the White House, where he has 24-hour medical care.

Trump emerged from Walter Reed around 6.30pm wearing a dark suit, a blue tie and a white face mask and boarded Marine One for the short flight back to the White House. After landing on the South Lawn, the President climbed the steps to the balcony over the Diplomatic Entrance, where four American flags had been placed, took off his mask, flashed two thumbs up and saluted twice for the benefit of television cameras on the ground below.

He then entered the building without immediately putting his mask back on even though staff members were nearby and he could still be contagious, according to medical studies of the virus timeline. At that point, he filmed the video, which was quickly uploaded to Twitter. A separate video, set to triumphal music, showed Marine One’s return and his saluting pose, and was posted online within an hour of his landing.

The President looked stronger than he did on Friday when he was first taken to the hospital, but he did appear to breathe heavily once reaching the top of the White House stairs.

New York Times News Service and Reuters.