It was around 6 PM on the 23rd of April, exactly six months ago to the day. President Donald Trump was pushing his anti-science, falsely optimistic spin on the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. He had been holding daily coronavirus task force briefings, but this would be the last one for a long time, because the President of the United State, on national television, encouraged the “injection” of disinfectant into the human body to kill the novel coronavirus.
To be fair, Trump was asking Dr. Deborah Birx to “check” on doing it, but they way he spoke made many believe injecting or injecting household cleansers could cure or even prevent contracting COVID-19.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out, in a minute,” Trump said from the White House press briefing room.. “Is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside, or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me.”
The Washington Post’s JM Rieger reminds us of the anniversary:
Within minutes medical experts took to social media to urge Americans to not follow the President’s suggestion.
It wasn’t long before poison control centers would report a huge spike in cases, clearly a result of the President encouraging the dangerous, even potentially deadly use of readily-available chemicals that most Americans, petrified by the mass death from the pandemic, likely have in their homes already.
The makers of Lysol were forced to issue a statement, saying “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).”
On Thursday, Trump claimed he had just been “joking,” which is false.
Americans today are remembering the dangerous stir Trump caused. Here’s how many are responding: