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Comment by black6 | Hacker News Reader

"...when President Trump proposed drinking bleach as a cure for COVID-19..."

Never. Happened. Disingenuous comments like this are why institutional trust is at an all-time low.

I do not see why people should reduce trust in CDC/FDA/FTC/USDA/other civil agencies because a writer for a blog or publication makes an error.

Why should people trust what that blog or publication who made an "error" claims that the CDC/FDA/FTC/USDA said?

I did not imply they should. I would always recommend cutting out as many middlemen as possible, and reading the source material.

When president trump suggested people inject some undefined disinfectant or shine UV lights up into their guts, then. That's more accurate, less of a ring to it of course.

This is absolutely false. Trump spoke about experimental covid therapeutics that involve shining UV lights inside patients' bodies, and these therapeutics are still purportedly under development and showing promising results to this very day.

"The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Therapy, were based on five days of 20-minute treatments with ultraviolet A (UVA) light using a catheter inserted into the patients' tracheas."

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/reduced-viral-loads-se...

You have been proven totally wrong. Now, does your media-driven hatred of Trump trump your ability to admit you were wrong, and you've updated your beliefs, and you're ready to move on more educated than you were before you read this comment? If not, you lack the basics to make you able to engage with scientific thought.

I just went back and watched the clip on YouTube again, so, no. No.

Link?

https://youtu.be/QtgVxGkrX1Y?t=102

I mean, we can all wonder what was going through the man's head, but there you have it.

You can literally watch him come up with the idea all on his own in real time.

So after watching that, you think Trump was NOT speaking off the cuff (during a 2.5 hour press Q&A he was doing daily at that point, versus a very adversarial press), you think he WAS NOT describing the UV therapy I linked to above? He was just making up lies to hurt people?

The problem with that clip is that he was speaking off the cuff, as he tended to do, and he didn't even consider whether or not what he was saying could hurt people. He had the idea "Maybe we could wash people's insides out" and out it came.

I think most people watching that clip wouldn't ascribe malice to him, but it does demonstrate why the man was an incredibly Dangerous person to have as president.

According to Trump himself, he was "being sarcastic" with those comments.

Maybe he thought a sarcastic reference to ingesting disinfectant would liven up his advanced knowledge of obscure experimental UV therapies?

I'm going with the alternate hypothesis that he was an layman with a very limited grasp of what he'd been told would kill the virus fumbling around trying to find reasons for the public to believe that a cure was imminent. That is sort of his job, and whilst I think most politicians would convey such messages less ineptly, to be honest I have less issue with Trump in this particular instance than the people who actually ingested bleach to own the libs, or continued to insist even after Trump himself had walked back the remarks by claiming they were [very inappropriate] sarcasm that Trump was passing on advanced medical knowledge and the only problem with those remarks was that the media and medical didn't appreciate them enough.

I definitely agree that his comments there were irresponsible and harmful but framing it as him making a suggestion that people try the things he's describing doesn't seem like an accurate representation of what he said.

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