I mean, to be clear, this is not a treatment for covid. No-one is suggesting that.
So now we have to argue about whether or not a 70-year-old quack treatment from soviet Russia is effective against this current pandemic instead of building consensus on test deployment or lockdown exit protocols. It's the same thing that happened with chloroquines last month. It's tiresome, and harmful.
BRYAN: We’ll get to the right folks who could.
TRUMP: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
So we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s — that’s pretty powerful."
Technically, you are correct, he didn't say the word "promising". Given that promising has latinate origins, rather than germanic, it's likely not in his vocabulary.
Still hydroxychloroquine ended up killing a bunch of vets, and at least one person credible enough to ingest it directly without medical advice or a prescription.
I applaud your goals of precision, but, stochastic terrorism is real, and the point of communication, especially in such dire circumstances, shouldd not only to be understood, but to make it impossible to be misunderstood.
Clarity and unambiguous language from leaders is literally essential public health.
That's a pretty far cry from telling people to inject bleach, which is the narrative some outlets are trying to spin right now.
It's also remarkably stupid. Like astoundingly dumb.
To quote Craig Manzin: 'One of the hallmarks of the dangerously stupid is the consistent belief they’ve found great solutions that experts somehow missed.'
The Maryland Emergency Management Agency received over 100 calls about injecting disinfectant as a potential cure. [4]
You know, it's possible to explore highly experimental therapies for a novel disease without naming them explicitly at the presidential press briefing during a pandemic. Doing so is INCREDIBLY irresponsible, as evidenced above.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-news-arizona-man-di...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/us/coronavirus-trump-chlo...
[3] https://apnews.com/a5077c7227b8eb8b0dc23423c0bbe2b2
[4] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/coronavirus-updates-china-repo...
Bill Bryan stands up and reports that they've tested a bunch of disinfectant processes in vitro and on surfaces, including bleach. Then Trump immediately begins riffing on that, before the guy sits down, and says, verbatim:
> [...] And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.
Now, no one is going to call that a clear statement. But in context it seems really obvious to me that he's talking about injecting exactly the list of disinfectants that he's referring to.
That was, after all, exactly my point.
Are you actually a new account? Because if so, be warned - that is exactly how HN works a lot of the time.
However, the transcript from the NY Times and BBC--not to mention my comment above--also has him saying "a great idea to look at" in the same response, which I do think is equivalent to 'promising'.
This is an inevitable consequence of telling others to be careful with their words.
Yes, this is a forum consisting largely of founder-engineers and words mean things. Not all bugs are spiders, not all disinfectants are bleach. Claiming the president suggested we inject bleach is disinformation, and it weakens the credibility of the rest of your argument.
Because I don't think injecting hydrogen peroxide, benzalkonium chloride, or isopropyl alcohol is going to have an effect that's any better.
Quibbling over whether or not they meant bleach or some other disinfectant isn't really the point. The point is the President was lending credence to the idea that injecting disinfectant into the human bloodstream might be a good thing to do. Which is absurd, regardless of whether or not he specifically meant bleach, and bleach is a perfectly reasonable stand in.
Bleach was, in fact, the first disinfectant in his list. Then Trump stands up and says we should investigate injecting those into the body.
I really don't think this it's applying a whole lot of spin to argue that Trump was saying we should inject the stuff the guy he was referring to had listed.
FTA. He was very explicitly talking about doing it inside human bodies.
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/fda-expands-access-to-...
I'm not fan of Trump, but the attacks on him over this and hydroxychloroquine are ridiculous.
Even without going into the absurdity of any of his specific claims, he should not be standing at a podium spitballing and speculating about potential treatments that he may or may not have heard about. Kind of the opposite of what is required from a leader during a crisis, and the impacts of doing so can actually be pretty devastating.
Source on this? I have heard about the couple that ate the aquarium chemicals, a bit of a stretch unless I missed the part where Trump mentioned aquarium chemicals
There's a reason why Reckitt Benckiser Group quickly issued a statement after Trump's claims, imploring people not to consume "through injection, ingestion or any other route" any of their products.
https://www.rb.com/media/news/2020/april/improper-use-of-dis...
Edit: just to combat the obvious response, would we even be talking about Lysol if Trump had not made those comments? Obviously, no. Two wrongs don't make a right
The Healight also offers no explanation for his "injecting disinfectant" claims, which were separate from the UV light claims. The term "disinfectant" among the public is most commonly used to indicate household disinfectant chemicals. So when the President muses about "injecting disinfectant", why would it be the media's role to then go and hunt for explanations that actually make sense from a medical perspective?
Yes, I believe it is the media's responsibility to be more intelligent than the President in this case, which honestly shouldn't be very hard. Time and time again they are lowering themselves to Trump's level presumably to soak up that sweet sweet ad revenue
That's the real problem, here. That's the real story.
If we view the media's role as nothing more than taking Trump's drivel and turning it into teachable moments or trying to find a positive spin on it, not only does it basically position the media as a PR arm of whomever the current administration is, by doing so it fails in its duty to inform the public about what is actually going on in the White House, and what the President is actually saying.
A key role of the fourth estate is to hold the President to account. That is incompatible with your view that they need to be a booster of the President in the name of "intelligence" or elevation of the dialogue.
Edit: I will also add that I see now that Trump is claiming that his talk yesterday of UV light and injecting disinfectants was "sarcasm".
> That's the real problem, here. That's the real story.
Is it? Is Donald Trump's incorrect use of the word disinfectant the most important thing happening in the world right now?
> If we view the media's role as nothing more than taking Trump's drivel and turning it into teachable moments or trying to find a positive spin on it, not only does it basically position the media as a PR arm of whomever the current administration is, by doing so it fails in its duty to inform the public about what is actually going on in the White House, and what the President is actually saying.
I have a few points here:
1. I don't think that the media needs to put a "positive spin". As I mentioned, the preferable response in my opinion is something along the lines of "Trump is wrong, but here is whats right" and then quickly move on. Instead, they put a negative spin on things, connecting Trump's words to Lysol because it better matched their incentives, which went viral and made this the biggest news story of the week. I'm sure some Trump supporter is going to inject Lysol because that's now what Trump said even though its not really what he said
2. The media IS in many ways a PR arm of whomever the current administration is. The government has a lot of control over what the media says as do many other powerful/wealthy individuals/organizations in this country. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
3. By criticizing Trump so often, the media leads many to believe that #2 is not the truth. But, the vast majority of criticism of the current administration is trivial in nature. Trump incorrectly using the word "disinfectant" is not the most important thing happening in the country this week. Not even close.
4. As a result of #3, the Trump administration has basically free rein to do any of the real evil things that the US government does on a regular basis without fear of scrutiny. The media is too busy talking about "disinfectant" to talk about any real issues. And the general public (edit: Democrats) trusts that the media is holding the Trump administration to a high standard as a result of #3. In terms of "real evil things", I think the media should be investigating the current bailouts and injection of liquidity in financial markets. But, the persons/organizations getting rich off that (at the tax payers expense), are the same powerful persons/organizations that have control over the media (again, see Chomsky).
All in all, I see the focus on this disinfectant as one of a long series of smoke screens to give the appearance of keeping the White House in check. In reality, they are just polluting our brains with all this talk about Lysol. Instead, they should have just said, maybe Trump is talking about this UV light therapy, and then moved on to something more important, instead of creating this whole hullabaloo about Lysol that really is not important in the grand scheme of things.
This is not a new pattern - this has been happening since Trump took office. The media uproar about what dumb things Trump said each week isn't real scrutiny.
Another way to look at it is that Trump intentionally says stupid things often to keep the media pre-occupied with that and distracted from the real things his administration is doing. In other words, he is "controlling the news cycle". I think this is a valid interpretation of the events although I don't give Trump that much credit and I think we should be looking closer at the media because they're going to be relevant much longer than Trump will. But, if this strikes a chord with you at all, consider this question: perhaps the media should not be taking the bait? The sarcasm comment aligns better with this theory. He got what he wanted and can now backtrack on his statements
PS. I realize that the argument in this comment is far from my argument in previous comments. It took some time for more to develop my thoughts. I'll be more careful next time. I would apologize for wasting time but I think I already paid the price in terms of downvotes
PPS. Summarizing my argument one last time before I put a lid on this: it seems to me that this whole disinfectant debacle is a big waste of time and the media could be doing better by educating people on treatment options to keep them optimistic or investigating real bad shit that the Trump administration is doing to make this country a better place. Thanks for your time, I definitely learned a lot from this argument and appreciate your participation even if we don't see eye to eye on this issue.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous - whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it'd be interesting to check that'
I don't think anybody can plausibly claim this incoherent stream of verbiage is an attempt to raise ultraviolet irradiation of blood as a possibility, particularly not in the context of a discussion which instead focused on how sunlight weakens the virus and isopryl alcohol kills it within one minute. And especially not now the person who made that statement has walked it back and said it was 'sarcastic'
HN guidelines don't require HNers to abandon their critical faculties.
But, in my opinion, it would benefit people more if the media tried to educate instead of "hurr durr he wants you to inject Lysol". Sadly I am optimistic in thinking the media exists to educate rather than accumulate ad views...
We need to be pursuing all treatment options right now, even if the gut feeling is that they won't work. We're in a situation that we have never been in before (i.e. pandemic with modern medicine), it is not far-fetched to believe the solution is something that we never expected to work.
edit: downvoters, feel free to respond..
I think rsynnott is saying it's pure coincidence that what he suggested sounds like UBI and it's likely that UBI is a term Trump has never heard before.
The paper is old, let's see how many news sources will magically remember about it to turn it into a PR stunt.