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Comment by thomquaid | Hacker News Reader

If you watched the whole clip, you would know 'disinfect' (verb) was used and not 'disinfectant' (noun) with respect to internal use. Very poorly articulated and easily capable of causing confusion, but broad media disingenuity is not helping anyone here.

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No, it was clearly disinfectant.

The whole quote:

“ 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. 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. And is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? It would be interesting to check that. That you’re gonna have to use medical doctors with.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests...

It's a terrible quote, like listening to someone wonder out loud "why don't we just keep our fridge open to cool the house down?"

But using that quote to gleefully claim that Trump is suggesting that people inject themselves (which is all your see online right now, esp Twitter and Reddit) is a textbook case of the least charitable interpretation.

If anyone was actually concerned about people injecting themselves with Lysol, they wouldn't publish headlines that put those words in Trump's mouth because you certainly don't get that from listening to the video clip. He's telling his advisor to "look into it", some off-the-cuff dumb hunch.

This kind of coverage does nothing but drive media ad impressions and the division between the voters. It also secures a 2020 Trump victory by being so dishonest.

The problem with your metaphor is leaving the Fridge open to cool the house does not kill you (and the person wondering that is not holding a position of high prestige). People are actually worried about people injecting disinfectant.

“My concern is that people will die. People will think this is a good idea,” Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told The Washington Post. “This is not willy-nilly, off-the-cuff, maybe-this-will-work advice. This is dangerous.”

Lysol is worried about it: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/do-not-inject-disinfecta...

And they have cause to be, after the last time Trump spoke about chloroquine and people listening to him consumed aquarium chemicals and died as a result.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/health/arizona-coronavirus-ch...

The media has a responsibility to report information of medical experts and no responsibility to be charitable to the President to save him from embarrassment here.

That's simply not true. He clearly says "and then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, and is there a way we can do something like that with injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it [presumably the virus] gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number."

I thought the same as you. But when I watched it again, he was talking about how you can disinfect in under a minute. He clearly was talking about the point the previous person said about how rubbing alcohol killed the virus is 30 seconds. I don't think he's talking about people injecting alcohol or bleach into their blood, but it's very easy to misinterpret that, and what he was saying was dangerous.

The maker of Lysol had to release a public message stating 'we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).'

I can guarantee their comms department spent a long time looking at his speech and the fallout from it before deciding that they had to issue this to prevent people from dying.

https://www.rb.com/media/news/2020/april/improper-use-of-dis...

> https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests...

In the video linked you can see that he clearly mentioned "disinfectant" then suggested injecting it. There's no other way to spin that.

The spin is saying that Trump is telling people to inject Lysol instead of just giving stupid hunch advice to his advisor.

Disinfect vs disinfectant is a red herring.

We saw the video. We know what he said. He's mentally unfit for office. He should resign and let Pence take over.

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