No, you weren't anywhere near better off 4 years ago
By Aldous J. Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team
Community
Happy bleachiversary, non-dead Americans! If you’re reading this, you likely didn’t listen to Donald Trump four years ago while COVID-19 was ravaging the globe. And you certainly took his words with a grain of salt—if not the entire punchbowl of tequila—four years ago today when he suggested disinfectant injections might turn out to be the silver bullet for ending the pandemic.
Of course, it’s appropriate that we revisit this at least once every four years, because this is the Olympics of Derp. It’s also appropriate for an election year because, believe it or not, this guy wants to be president again. And millions of Americans who presumably didn’t inject Clorox want to help him achieve that impossible dream/waking nightmare.
RELATED STORY: 4 years ago today: Trump claims 'ultimate' and 'total' authority
So without further ado, let’s play “remember when?” as we turn the clock back to 2000 and enjoy this golden oldie from the silver tongue of the bronze bozo:
Trump at press conference: 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 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. Right? And then I see the disinfectant, 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 you’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But 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 pretty powerful.
Look at the lady in the photo above. It's the precise moment when White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx’s soul leaves her body, picks up a baggie of space ketamine at a Klingon yard sale, and injects it into its ectoplasmic eyeballs.
Of course, while Birx stood cow-eyed and mute as Trump suggested injecting poisons into veins and inserting lamps where the UV light don’t ordinarily shine, she had a lot to say later when she was no longer Trump’s employee and—shocked face—was promoting a book.
In an April 2022 interview with ABC News, Birx recalled that moment, shall we say, not-so-fondly. According to Birx, Trump’s bizarre comments stemmed from a misunderstanding over his advisers’ earlier reassurance that natural sunlight would help disinfect playground equipment, making playgrounds safer for kids than they might have otherwise seemed. Naturally, Trump took that little grain of truth and turned it into sour mash. ABC News reported:
“I just wanted it to be ‘The Twilight Zone’ and all go away,” Birx said. “I mean, I just—I could just see everything unraveling in that moment.”
Birx also addressed that moment in a Monday interview with “Good Morning America.”
“This was a tragedy on many levels,” she told co-anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“I immediately went to his most senior staff, and to Olivia Troye, and said this has to be reversed immediately,” she said; Troye was an adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Yes, many of us wanted this to be “The Twilight Zone”—even though it would have been the worst episode ever and might have forever tarnished the memory of that classic. Though I would have preferred it be a dream where I’m back in high school, Trump is stuck in my locker, and I can’t remember the combination. As it was, it was one of those nightmares where today is the day of the big test and the president hasn’t studied.
Of course, this episode was just a microcosm of Trump’s larger COVID-19 response, which was like watching a squirrel trying to collect nuts with its head stuck in a Snapple bottle. If Trump had done nothing on COVID other than recite CDC press releases from his toilet and wear a mask when his babysitters told him to, we would have been far better off. As it was, he felt the need to regale us with his barmy Demon Sperm Doctor tales.
In fact, this one incident may have sickened even more Americans than his weird comments about his daughter. Of course, you don’t ever want to imagine Trump playing doctor but—ironically—it’s even more disturbing when he does it this way.
But people certainly listened to [Trump’s] words as officials from the Maryland Emergency Management Agency sent out an alert one day after receiving more than 100 calls about ingesting disinfectants as a possible treatment for COVID-19, according to the Governor’s office, and reported by ABC News.
Meanwhile, calls to New York City’s Poison Control Center for exposure to specific household cleaners and disinfectants increased more than twofold after the President’s comments on Thursday, WNBC New York reported today. Data from the New York Poison Center center revealed that in the 18 hours after Trump’s comments, the Poison Center received 30 exposure calls about disinfectants. Ten involved bleach, 9 were about Lysol, and 11 others regarding other household cleaners. Compared to the same time window last year, there were a total of 13 exposure calls, with 2 involving bleach, but none involving Lysol-type products.
Of course, as Trump became increasingly desperate to hand-wave COVID away, he started beer-bonging snake oil like paint buckets of pureed cheesy fries. For instance, he continually promoted hydroxychloroquine in early 2020 as a COVID cure based on little more than wishful thinking. And according to at least one study, people died because of that, too. According to The Hill “an estimated 16,990 excess deaths across six countries—Turkey, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and the U.S.—were likely attributed to hydroxychloroquine use.”
Gee, thanks, Dr. Trump!
Meanwhile, in case you’d forgotten—like roughly half of the country appears to have done—Trump’s general COVID incompetence and specific embrace of pseudoscientific conspiracy theories and undermining scientists likely led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.
Almost 470,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far, with the number widely expected to go above half a million in the next few weeks. At the same time some 27 million people in the US have been infected. Both figures are by far the highest in the world.
By the way, as any MAGA mouse will be quick to remind you, Trump never actually said people should inject bleach. He said we should consider injections of disinfectants. Big difference, snowflake! Because bleach injections are bonkers, but disinfectant injections are super stable-geniusy. And you seem to have overlooked this portion of his legendary “I Have a Beam ... in My Head” speech: “So you’re going to have to use medical doctors, right?”
See? He wanted to use medical doctors to test this out. Not English lit Ph.Ds or gold-toothed Muppets. So there. He was totally in control the whole time. Four more years!
This November, you have a choice between a guy who follows the science, a guy who thinks you should inject bleach, and a guy who thinks you shouldn’t inject anything. The fate of our nation and the world hangs in the balance. Choose wisely.
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