I’m Sorry, What?
Trump made some odd suggestions on today's Aló Presidente.
Bloomberg reports: Trump Sees Coronavirus Hope in Summer, Sunlight and Bleach
“The virus is dying at a much more rapid pace” from exposure to humidity or heat, Bill Bryan, an undersecretary at the Homeland Security Department, said at a White House news conference on Thursday.
[…]
Bryan suggested the new U.S. research offered practical tips for many Americans, including “increasing the temperature and humidity for potentially contaminated indoor spaces” in order to kill the virus on surfaces. At a temperature of 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 80% humidity in the summer sun, for example, the research showed the virus would last just two minutes on a porous surface. Dry environments Bryan said, may require “extra care.”
‘Very Powerful Light’
Trump appeared intrigued by the research after Bryan’s presentation.
“Suppose we hit the body with a tremendous ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said, following Bryan’s presentation. “I think that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it.”
Researchers could also bring “the light inside the body” Trump said, “either through the skin or in some other way.”
[…]
Bryan also said that research had shown bleach could kill the virus in saliva or respiratory fluids in five minutes and isopropyl alcohol could kill it even more quickly. Trump suggested there would be more testing there, too.
“The disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. One minute,” he said. “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside?” He said it would be “almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs.”
(Emphases mine).
In case you can’t believe what you just read:
I am not sure which is crazier, the notion that cleaner could be used or light could be put inside the body (although, really, does one have to rank in this case?).
Unlike the President of the United States, the Bloomberg report cautions:
Disinfecting surfaces is an important practice in infection control. The coronavirus is fragile outside the body, and is essentially a packet of genetic information wrapped in a packet of lipids. Hand washing with soap is particularly effective in cleaning it and stopping transmission.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned Americans to be careful with cleaning products in their rush to use cleaners and disinfectants, which have been snapped up from store shelves and are still hard to find at many retailers. Poisonings related to cleaners and disinfectants rose significantly in March, according to the CDC. In one case, a woman was sent to the hospital after filling her sink with bleach solution, vinegar and hot water to soak her vegetables.
He tries to bring Birx into the mix and then note his response when confronted about the whole heat and light thing:
You know, he’s just asking. Lighten up!
All of this is, of course, quite bizarre and I am leaning heavily on the absurdity angle (as this is very much a laugh lest you cry situation). But, good grief, we in the middle of a global pandemic with no clear end in sight and with over 44,000 Americans dead, and the president is spitballing light therapy and the potential use of cleaners in the human body to fight Covid-19. And worse, many, many of my fellow Americans think he is doing a good job.
BTW, if we think that heat and humidity will be our salvation, the following story popped up while I was writing this (via the NYT): Ecuador’s Death Toll During Outbreak Is Among the Worst in the World.
With bodies abandoned on sidewalks, slumped in wheelchairs, packed into cardboard coffins and stacked by the hundreds in morgues, it is clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus.
But the epidemic is even worse than many people in the country realize.
The death toll in Ecuador during the outbreak was 15 times higher than the official number of Covid-19 deaths reported by the government, according to an analysis of mortality data by The New York Times.
The numbers suggest that the South American country is suffering one of the worst outbreaks in the world.[…]
There has been a surge of infections in the province that includes Ecuador’s business capital, Guayaquil, where residents are thought to have brought the virus home after visiting Spain.
In Guayaquil, fatalities during the first two weeks of April were eight times higher than usual, the data indicates — a far greater rise than that of New York City, where fatalities were four times higher in recent weeks.
Guayaquil has a decidedly tropical climate
PS. Yes, the use of light to kill an infestation was a plot point in the Star Trek TOS episode, “Operation: Annihilate”:
“I’m not a doctor but I have a good – you know what”.
No I don’t.
Someone on Twitter thinks this has the makings of a winning campaign message
Source: https://twitter.com/A_NeedhamNYU/status/1253483940092022787?s=09
In other news, someone had already memed this: https://twitter.com/DeanxRiley/status/1253491455940866051?s=19
And I guess this also means we know the president most likely has not seen “Heather’s” (which really isn’t surprising).
Decompensation in real time. This is what mental illness looks like under stress – Trump in 2016 would like have not said this or at least realized not to say it out loud. He was with it enough to know dumb people latched onto his every word and took it as gospel so maybe suggesting injecting bleach isn’t something to say on camera. Could get sued, after all….
It’s not a joke anymore if it ever was. This man is legit losing his facilities on camera and nobody’s doing sh^t about it. The most powerful man in the country is getting people killed with the garbage coming out of his mouth and they’re just…. standing there letting it happen. If Trump really is a War-Time President, we just watched a war crime against the American people. Someone’s going to try injecting disinfectant and die; we can only hope they choose to do it to themselves and not a family member or child. Anti-vaxxers in particular inject or make their “autistic” children drink bleach to “cure” them rather then take them for proper medical diagnosis and treatment. The MMS scam has definitely claimed lives and now here’s POTUS straight up asking “WTH Not?” live.
Note: updated with a coda on Ecuador.
Cant wait to hear what the respiratory therapists say when I order Clorox in the neb treatments tomorrow.
Steve
@KM:
I am not so sure about that, TBH.
You can’t inject people with disinfectant to get rid of the virus.
But you can inject people with disinfectant to get rid of people.
So maybe it isn’t a spray tan at all! Maybe he gets some kind of light inside the body tan and that’s why he looks like that…oh, and to all his fans out there, saying things like, “I’m the president and you’re fake news” isn’t owning the press, but rather, the rantings of a petulant child…the “fake” news will still be reporting long after his senile ass is wheeled out of the White House…
That Star Trek episode was the first thing to come to mind when I heard what the president said. Which means we’re both kinda old. Hopefully anyone who tries UV therapy has an inner eyelid like Vulcans…
@Kathy:
It’s actually a “two-fer”, taking care of both at once…
@Steven L. Taylor :
If nothing else, Trump knows lawsuits. Lived and breathed them so he knows where the line is.
If you go back and watch, he’s actually pretty careful not to say anything actionable. Offensive, absurd, un-Constitutional and mind-blowingly stupid – yes. Something that might get him in legal trouble he can’t wiggle out of – no. FOX used to be good at that too before Trump won and they got used to letting their freak flag fly. They gotten used to using the bullhorn instead of the dog whistle; that’s why the hydroxychloroquine might end up cost them some pretty pennies.
Maybe not crazier but it has to be close–Televangelist Pat Robertson agreed that abortion and same-sex marriage are partly to blame for the novel coronavirus that has caused massive social and economic upheaval in the U.S.
This is so elementary that any explanations are unnecessary. But if you ever wondered why things like rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, antiseptics, hydrogen peroxide and such require a warning label indicating “FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY,” you need wonder no more.
Meanwhile, Pat Robertson is more than partially to blame for why so many people are turning away from organized religion and why televangelists have such disreputable reputations…
Does anyone actually think Trump reads warning labels…
@An Interested Party:
I don’t think El PITO even reads.
@An Interested Party: Guys like Trump are the reason warning labels exist
Not a peep out of Cult45. It’s going to be tough to rationalize this one.
maybe he was trying to get light into his body with that weird glowing orb thing from Saudi Arabia.
I’M SO EFFIN SICK OF THIS SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!
@Jim Brown 32:
That’s my thought every single day. Literally.
@Kathy:
But you just know that some unsuspecting Trump supporter will try this on himself and his wife, because the Pres was suggesting it.
These spectacles need to end already: a menace to society.
These would be fine questions in private, if he knew absolutely nothing about the virus, and was trying to get a handle on all of this and learn.
Alas, it’s in public, after months, and he hasn’t learned anything.
It amazes me that the people he was talking to off screen did not shut this down immediately. UV radiation is high energy light that kills the virus by breaking down it’s RNA. UV is why you sunburn, and why the sun gives you skin cancer. UVC radiation, which very quickly kills the virus, is especially destructive. It can cause eye damage and quick skin burns. UVC from the sun is filtered out by our atmosphere. Arc welders produce UVC radiation, which is why you need a very dark face shield and why it can damage your eyes. Suggesting UV to kill the virus is like suggesting using lye to stop heartburn.
I am also amazed that none of the news reports I have seen mention this. Everyone is too busy making fun of the disinfectant comment. Way to help his re-election. Since the right wing conspiracy nuts already are trying to use bleach as a prophylactic the disinfectant won’t put them off much. Reporting on the science of sunburn, something we are all familiar with may have pierced the shell of the Trump cult.
@Gustopher:
Yet, as Steven notes:
Still more than 4 out of 10 ten Americans want him to stay in charge. Just let that sink in…
@Bob@Youngstown:
Chlorine gas was one of the first substances used as poison gas in WWI.
@RWB: I would suggest that sadly the bleach aspect is more understandable, his cult unlikely to understand how awful the UVC idea is (although having his base UVC burning themselves has a certain entertainment value).
You beat me to it @Kathy: but I’ll leave this here for the curious: A Brief History of Chemical War
“Do you remember Billie May’s Super Orange Cleaner? Great guy by the way. Tremendous guy. I said if oranges can clean counters just like that–just like that–why aren’t we shooting orange juice up our ass? What have you got to lose? What have you got to lose? So we’re looking into that and I really think it’s going to be tremendous.”
What will this fool suggest next? Ingesting chlorine gas because chlorine is a disinfectant? The mind reels.
And, the gaslighting has begun.
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/04/23/fact-check-no-trump-didnt-propose-injecting-people-with-disinfectant/
@Bob@Youngstown: I’ve given up. Let people kill themselves with their stupidity. And if they end up killing OTHER people, let’s prosecute them for manslaughter by acute negligence.
At some point, we really are going to have to create a crime of gross stupidity and get people out of interacting with others before they kill people.
Here’s a list of other substances and things that will kill the SARS-COV2 virus:
Hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid, carbolic acid, lava, high-voltage electricity, gamma rays, beta rays, alpha rays (probably), high-doses of X-rays, lye, turpentine, laundry detergent, hand soap, hand sanitizer, methyl alcohol, and I’m sure there are many more.
If Trump ever gets infected, or merely wants a prophylactic, I’d be willing to inject, press, insert, subject, implant or otherwise introduce into his body, or just his throat and lungs, any and all of these substances and/or forms of radiation, completely free of charge.
@Neil Hudelson:
Perfect imitation.
ohhhh
We’ve come full circle, at the beginning of this the Qanon morons were touting some sort of bleach solution as a preventative.
Tiny’s words have caused the manufacturer of Lysol to issue a warning against injecting, ingesting their product.
@KM:
My mother in law is in the throws of mid-stage dementia. While she’s ahead of Tiny on the curve, a few months ago her thought patterns were similar to what his are today.
@Jen:
Well, they’re getting ahead of themselves.
First they have to justify the idiot idea, saying it’s plausible at least and it ought to be tested. I’m sure there has never been a randomized controlled study that gave any people, healthy or sick, daily doses of bleach, isopropyl alcohol, UVC light, etc. and recorded benefits, side effects, or damages.
Next they have to claim he was being creative and thinking outside the box, and playing the media in a game of 742nd dimensional chess.
Then they can claim he never said it, they never tried to justify it, and they never tried to defend it.
It’s important to note here that Rucker, who is a fairly good journalist, had earlier pressed Trump on his pushing of the malaria drug, hydrochloroquine.
The day before Trump had stood up and said CDC Director Redfield had been misquoted. Redfield admitted he had not been misquoted. Then Trump said he didn’t think COVID would come back in the fall, Fauci had to say it will definitely be back in the fall.
Trump says we are testing more than anyone in the world. We rank pretty low in testing per capita testing; the only metric that matters.
Trump says he closed down travel from China but >40,000 people traveled here from China after his “lockdown”.
I’ll leave it to professionals to evaluate Trumps mental facilities.
But we should not ever, ever, hire another game show host as President.
This was freakin hilarious.
https://twitter.com/sarahcpr/status/1253474772702429189
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Amen and amen.
The Star Trek episode, “Operation – Annihilate!” was a prescient metaphor for the current times. Under the influence of the parasites, the population was in constant pain, driving them into violent rages. In the end, shining an intense light on them proved to be the parasites’ downfall.
@KM:
Trump University?
In all honesty, I am not sure if he is worse/declining or not. I think he is a natural conman/carnival barker/snake-oil salesman who been saying endlessly insane things at his own rallies and now, empowered by the office he holds (and that he doesn’t understand) to talk only TV for hours a day. That his rambling are getting more rambly is not a surprise.
This most recent bit is not all that different than his hope that in April it would disappear or that hydroxychloroquine was a miracle drug. He noted the other day that his job was to be a “cheerleader” for the country.
I keep wondering when I’ll find the line that Trump supporters will cross when I give up on them completely. I keep leaving the door open for them, including people I know. There will be a time after this, and I just hope some of them see the error of their ways. Meanwhile, I occasionally engage them in polite, patient discussion about common ground. I harbor no illusions about the odds of success. Many are lost to us, in the way that there will always be people who support horrible regimes, long after their crimes and catastrophes are visible to all.
This moment may delineate the line, beyond which I cannot continue that dialog. It’s a very sharp, clear line. Trump already pimped chloraquinine, which proved to be worse than useless, but actually harmful. Now he’s promoting investigation into something even more ridiculous and dangerous. There’s no wiggle room, no place for fantasies about the potential benefits of tax cuts, coddling dictators, humiliating allies, or promoting Labradoodle breeders. There’s really nothing to talk about, if you want to defend someone who thinks that Lysol injections might clean you out, or sticking a flashlight down your throat might kill the virus. We’re done.
@Steven L. Taylor: I think he is undergoing some kind of cognitive decline, in front of all of us. The word slurring is one of several signs that people have noted. He may also be increasingly fatigued. We know that he doesn’t sleep adequately, from his poop tweets. It’s not clear if sleep issues are new or not.
It’s a sign of these degenerate times that I’m writing the following sentence: Someone should compare the timing of the President’s poop tweets, before and after the 2016 election, to help identify one possible source of his cognitive decline.
@Kingdaddy:
He’s boasted for ages that he doesn’t require much sleep. I remember this because I’m a BIG believer in the need for sleep and most studies indicate that there are very, very few people who can truly function well with less than 7-8 hours of sleep per night. Anyone who boasts/brags about not needing any more than 4 hours is immediately suspect to me.
@Kingdaddy: He has got to affected by the pressure of the office (and of aging). I just am not sure I am convinced that his overall behavior is more about decline than it is that this is who is and has always been.
Like all of us, he is revealing a lot about ourselves under stress and fatigue.
@Kingdaddy:
Indeed.
Second Wave Worse Than the First
95 South says:
Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 13:14
I’m trying to find the truth, and to help people who have gotten off-track in their thinking.
Clearly Donald Trump has gone off the rails with his suggestion that disinfectant might be injected to treat Coronavirus 19.
The country needs you to help this pathetic creature get back on track.
Here is the White House switchboard number: 202-456-1414.
Call and offer your healing powers to the president today. We will all be grateful.
If you have any doubt that Donald Trump’s words can influence citizen’s behavior remember Bruce Michael Alexander:
@95 South you might consider finding Mr. Alexander and offer him your guidance to get him back on track too.
H/T Charlie Sykes Oh thank you, thank you Charlie.
@Steven L. Taylor: One of the things that makes it hard to check whether Trump is in significant mental decline is that, for the first time in his life, he can’t simply storm off and disappear for a few months/years when his ineptitude and nonsense becomes apparent. That was his modus operandi in all such incidents in the past.
@CSK:
The current spin is that he was quoted out of context and that by injecting people with bleach he actually mean with should be irrigating their lungs with bleach, because that’s not just as insane.
@Stormy Dragon: Yeah, what I’ve seen amounts to “he DID NOT say you should ingest or inject disinfectants, he said IT SHOULD BE STUDIED.”
As if *that* needs to be studied. FFS.
@Stormy Dragon: @Jen:
I’ve seen. The Cult always comes up with something, doesn’t it?
@Jen :
And how to MAGAts think that can “be studied” without trying it??? Considering this isn’t something you can test on animals (COVID-19 seems to be a human-exclusive problem), some infected person going to have to offer up their arm same as with the hydroxychloroquine trials. “What do you have to lose?” sounds better when asking to test out a new drug trial as compared to, oh say getting injected with bleach.
Even their ignorance is ignorant. “Should be studied” as a excuse doesn’t even work!!!
@RWB:
Exactly. I think it’s because most people get bleach/ disinfection should not be ingested whereas UV = radiation = BAD for you is less intuitive. It’s not like targeted radiation as in for cancer since the virus is your blood and definitely affecting other organs. Full body exposure to radiation was recently documented for mass consumption in the wonderful mini-series Chernobyl. While not the same type of radiation as UV, it gets across the concept that the reason it kills the virus is that it kills EVERYTHING in your system – bone marrow, skin cells, nerves, muscle and brain if the dosage is high enough. If you’re “lucky” you might end up with a miscarriage, stroke or cancer.
Trump and Co aren’t that bright so “light” to him isn’t something that can hurt you. Anyone who stopped and thought about it however would realize anything powerful enough to “shine light in your body” is powerful enough to destroy more then just the virus……
@KM: IT GETS BETTER.
The president is now saying that he “was being sarcastic” — as if *that* is somehow okay, being sarcastic about a treatment method in the middle of a news conference during a deadly pandemic.
(PS–anyone who listens to that clip can tell he was not being sarcastic.)
I suppose that standing in the proximity of a nuclear explosion would generate enough “artificial sunlight” to kill the virus. The research was a slideshow (who knows where the paper is or if it’s been peer reviewed) that used simulated solar light, that may or may not have contained UV-C . BTW, UV-C will kill everything.
Here is the slideshow for those interested. Link
@Jen: As anyone with kids knows, “I was just joking” is a common juevinile defense against offense/stupid/not thought out utterances.
@Jen: This kind of gaslighting just makes me so angry. I want to scream “Don’t piss on my leg and try to tell me it’s raining!” How stupid does he think we are? (Rhetorical question…maybe.) It’s as obvious as a nuclear explosion to anyone listening to him, either live yesterday or on video afterward, that he wasn’t being sarcastic.
He’s done this several times before where he’s said something completely bonkers, and then tried to claim he was “joking.” It’s the first excuse any abuser tries.
Cult45 will leap on the sarcasm excuse with audible and visible relief. Some of them will even believe it. The ones who don’t believe it will effect to believe it, simply because they have so much emotionally invested in Trump now that they have to do so. And I think they like the feeling if belonging they get from the cult.
Witch Doctor Trump Speaks…
@Jen:
I’ll believe maybe, probably, perhaps there is a small one quintillionth percent of a chance he was being sarcastic, if he doesn’t repeat this stable genius idea at any time in the near future.
Like when he said there were fine people in both sides, or suggested nuking a hurricane, and many, many more.
BTW, that’s another addition to the Trumpish-English dictionary:
Stable genius: Being too dumb to grasp one’s own stupidity, and too stupid to understand the preceding clause, but people tell me I’m smart!
@Mister Bluster:
“gaslighting…
When Trump jams a flashlight up his ass to cure the coronavirus…”
No, he needs an open flame to light the gas.
@Jen:
Also he said this (paraphrased):
Reporter – “If you were being sarcastic why were you looking at the Dr.?”
Trump – “I was looking at you”
Reporter – “I wasn’t there”.
Trump – “I was looking at Bill, the doctors, all the reporters – I knew you weren’t there… [them to female reporter]. You were there – I always know when you’re there”.
The Guardian reports that Trump recently received a letter from the man that distributes
He read the letter he wrote Trump on his radio show, and then celebrated Trump’s words about injecting disinfectants as a cure for Covid on his Facebook page.
link
Just a reminder, to no one in particular:
Trump yesterday: “The disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. One minute,” he said. “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside?”
…I see the disinfectant (unintelligeable) knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that uh by injection inside…
…I see the disinfectant (unintelligeable) knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that uh by injection inside…
@Steven L. Taylor: He doubled down on it today, probably without realizing it, since he was in the midst of denying yestereday’s comments:
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1253742051159498753
According to Gov. Larry Hogan’s comms director, nearly 100 people called the state’s hotline asking if ingesting or injecting disinfectants could help or cure COVID-19.
Just so we’re 100% clear here that what the president says matters, because there are people who–for some ungodly and unknown reason–continue to take the man seriously.
@Jen:
Gee, I guess they didn’t realize he was being sarcastic.
The latest transparently false spin comes from Dr. Birx. Apparently Trump was “still digesting” information he’d gotten before the briefing started and was “talk[ing] through it out loud.”
Two things:
1. I know people have a lot of praise for Birx and Fauci et al. but at some point, we have to realize they are enablers.
2. If Trump weren’t such a cretinous, inarticulate windbag, there wouldn’t be this constant need to try to figure out what the fuck he was attempting to convey.
@Mikey: Speaking of Drs. Birx and Fauci, apparently neither is present at today’s edition of Grandpa Ranty’s Poop-Flinging EXTRAVAGANZZZZZZZZA!
You know, this just reminds me of the “don’t pay attention to what the President says” kinds of discussions we’ve had here before. I can think of a way to understand what he said that isn’t horrifyingly toxic, just kind of eye-rolly. (My grandfather talked like this all the time. I still loved him, but I wouldn’t have made him president.)
But Trump likes to express himself in a particular way – a way that is hyperbolic and colorful, but is fundamentally incompatible with official duties.
Because people listen to him in a way that they didn’t when he was just a WWF tagalong or a host of a reality TV show, or a real estate developer. He doesn’t, or can’t understand that.
@Mikey:
Pause a moment to ponder the RWNJ response if Obama had ever offered this as an… “explanation”… of something he had said in an official White House press conference.
@Mikey:
I don’t know. To me it sounds like a burn.
@Mikey:
Interestingly, Cult45 always claims to understand everything Trump says–though they often make this claim in retrospect.
@DrDaveT:
Do you think they’re not still talking about the time Obama implied the US had 57 states?
Though, as I recall, he didn’t alter maps of the US with a Sharpie to show he was right. That was a first-class blunder, but he has more class in his pinky toe than Trump has in his orange body.
@Kathy: Not to mention that when you view the clip he started to say 50 states and meant to shift to 47. He notes that he hasn’t been in 3 states. Link.
He definitely said 57, but contextually he clearly meant 47.
In fairness to Trump’s handlers, this moronic utterance was so irredeemably stupid, there is no rational way to spin it. I mean none. The one they chose, “I was being ‘sarcastic’ “, is as credible as an offer to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. The rest may be worse, as far as Trump’s tarnished image goes, and they had to do something.
But in full fairness to El PITO’s handlers, they chose to attach themselves to this racist, odious, ignorant, lazy bag of hot air in full cognitive decline. Now they have to suffer the consequences.
Imagine if Hillary had won. And coronavirus happened.
@Kathy: Remember the time Obama suggested (correctly) that properly inflating tires saved energy? He was roundly mocked by the right.
@de stijl: Republicans would be refusing to pass aid bills and complaining that Hillary didn’t react to the threat until December.