April 24, 2020 10:03 AM UTC

Listening to President Trump Will Literally Kill You

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #2: President Trump made a pretty weak attempt to cover for himself today. From The Washington Post:

President Trump claimed Friday that he was speaking sarcastically when he mused during a White House briefing about whether disinfectants that can kill the novel coronavirus on surfaces and in the air might be used inside the human body.

He made his comments to reporters after signing a $484 billion spending bill with money for small businesses, hospitals and testing to battle the coronavirus.

“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,” the president said to reporters gathered in the Oval Office. [Pols emphasis]

Uh huh. Sure thing.

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UPDATE: ProgressNow Colorado calls on Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) to say something. Here’s Fawn Bolak, Communications Director for ProgressNow Colorado:

“The daily spreading of potentially deadly misinformation by the President of the United States during this crisis is totally unacceptable. Trump’s closest political loyalists, like Sen. Gardner, must intervene before more Americans die.”

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More than 50,000 Americans have died from exposure to COVID-19 in less than four months. We’re fast approaching another milestone number: the 58,000 Americans who died over a decade of fighting in the Vietnam War.

The coronavirus is unquestionably deadly. Apparently, so is President Trump, who is being widely criticized for his remarks in Thursday’s White House briefing in which he suggested that COVID-19 patients could perhaps be injected with bleach or alcohol in order the combat the virus. From The Washington Post:

After a presentation Thursday that touched on the disinfectants that can kill the novel coronavirus on surfaces and in the air, President Trump pondered whether those chemicals could be used to fight the virus inside the human body.

“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute,” Trump said during Thursday’s coronavirus press briefing. “And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

The question, which Trump offered unprompted, immediately spurred doctors, lawmakers and the makers of Lysol to respond with incredulity and warnings against injecting or otherwise ingesting disinfectants, which are highly toxic.

“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.” [Pols emphasis]

Today, the company that makes disinfectants like Lysol and Dettol issued a statement unambiguously warning customers NOT to ingest its products. And then this happened:

As Bloomberg News explains:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned patients against taking two malaria medications that have been talked up by President Donald Trump for Covid-19, unless carefully monitored in a hospital or as part of a clinical trial.

The FDA said it was issuing the warning for the drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, after reports that patients taking them, especially in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin, had experienced heart issues [Pols emphasis].

Trump has been promoting hydroxychloroquine, typically a drug used to treat malaria, for several weeks, often attaching the phrase “What do you have to lose?” to his suggestion. As it turns out, you have quite a bit to lose from taking hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment: YOUR LIFE.

The good news here, if there is any, is that recent polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that the majority of Americans do not think of President Trump as a reliable source for coronavirus information. As The Associated Press explains:

Just 28% of Americans say they’re regularly getting information from Trump about the coronavirus and only 23% say they have high levels of trust in what the president is telling the public. Another 21% trust him a moderate amount.

Confidence in Trump is higher among his supporters, though only about half of Republicans say they have a lot of trust in Trump’s information on the pandemic — and 22% say they have little or no trust in what he says about the COVID-19 outbreak.

Of course, the corollary here is that roughly 1-in-4 Americans still say they have high levels of trust in what President Trump is telling the public about coronavirus. This is very, very bad news because taking medical advice from Trump will absolutely kill you.