So on Thursday, Trump invited the head of science for the Department of Homeland Security to join his coronavirus press conference. Mr. Bryan said some things that were interesting, giving valuable information that could be used to slow the spread of the virus. And he did mention that yes, sunlight has been shown to kill the virus on surfaces.
That’s not really a surprise, UV light has been used to disinfect surfaces for a long time now. But the effectiveness of UV against this particular virus was encouraging, and supported Trump’s “this will all go away in the summer and I’ll take credit for thinking of it” plan.
After Mr. Bryan, himself not a scientist — he holds a masters degree in strategic intelligence — sat down, an obviously pumped president returned to the lectern. There were things that could kill the virus! He probably already understood that at some level before, but now he was really seeing it! All we needed to do was take the things that killed the virus outside a human body… and put them inside.
So he turned and said to his pet non-scientist from Homeland Security that Mr. Bryan should look into using light inside coronavirus patients. But why stop there? Disinfectants also kill the virus! Perhaps we should look into using those inside the body as well! Trump was, at that moment, spit-balling ideas with someone modestly more qualified than he was to figure that shit out.
Had they been alone in a quiet room, Mr. Bryan might have been able to say, “Good idea, Mr. President, but those things kill indiscriminately. The challenge is to find something that will kill the virus without killing the host, or to strengthen the host’s innate ability to fight the virus itself.” And Trump would be pissed, but probably not enough to fire the guy, and life would go on.
But that’s not what happened, because it was not a quiet room. It was a press conference, going live to the entire nation. Trump suggested investigating shooting up disinfectants.
Trump does not think before he speaks. If he did, it might occur to him that this is not the first virus humanity has encountered, and that perhaps there were reasons we don’t try to apply chemicals that kill indiscriminately inside our bodies. The closest we get (as far as I know) is chemotherapy, where the drugs are really nasty, but even then they target the bad cells more than the good cells.
Trump didn’t think, because he had a Great Idea.
What Trump thought would happen: His science pal would say, “That’s a great idea! We’ll get right on that!” Probably, in the short time of the press conference, The Donald didn’t even have time to get to the part of his fantasy where the world lionizes him for single-handedly solving the crisis. That came later in the shower.
What actually happened: The world went ape-shit because his incredibly stupid ideas were spoken in front of the whole damn country, and a lot of people instantly conflated “Tide Pod eater” with “Trump Supporter.”
Sure, people have already died from Trump’s medical advice, and some of the deaths have a Tide Pod glow to them, but not very many. Not very many deaths by stupidity can be directly attributed to Trump, anyway. We’ll never know the death toll from liberating Michigan. Might be zero, might be a thousand or more when all is over, but we’ll never know. However many people he does kill by supporting those protests, a disproportionate percentage of them will be first responders and health care professionals, and more than a few working poor.
His tweets about “liberating” certain states (he did not congratulate protesters in states with Republican governors, although the policies and the arguments were the same) are ultimately far more harmful than a few dumb-ass remarks that may get a handful of fucking idiots killed. Trump’s “cross your fingers and hope that sunshine saves us” strategy (I bet Australia can’t wait for… oh, wait, never mind) is much more dangerous to our nation as a whole than suggesting people should shove blacklights up their butts.
(Donald didn’t actually suggest that, just as he didn’t suggest people do I.V. drips of Lysol.)
I’d guess that Trump’s idiot musing on Thursday will kill ten people, tops. Ten stupid people. Probably fewer. And while I’m as big a fan as anyone at pointing out how goddam moronic our president is, we need to remember where he’s doing the most harm and who is being harmed. While the man-child president grasps for a miracle cure to get him (not us) out of this pickle, the rest of us have to keep pushing ahead.
This is the calculus we have come to, weighing the relative harm of Trump’s stupid-ass statements. But as long as we’re here, let’s keep a little perspective. More people will die from his evisceration of the EPA than will inject Lysol into their blood.
I look forward to things returning to normal so we can go back to trying to find all those children ICE misplaced.
We may be misjudging Trump’s intellectual quest for an immediate and infallible eradication of the Covid-19 threat. He, in fact, is one of the few nationally-prominent leaders of this age who is both willing to think outside of the box, and publically promote radical new ideas. After all, conventional medical science has failed us, and instead of admitting defeat and moving over for more creative approaches, the medical apoligists are demanding even more time to pursue their failed investigations, thinking perhaps that they may yet succeed.
Had the media and press representatives been a bit more respectful, tolerant, and patient during Trump’s stream of consciousness idea-gathering audiations, they’d have been astonished and humbled at what would have come next during an exploratory exposition into the qualities of light, heat, and chemical energy applications to neutralize or even kill the novel corona virus infections.
Here, for consideration, is what Trump was able to develop once he’d retreated from the media jacksnapes.
Orgone Energy Accumulator: this six-sided chamber developed by the forgotten genius, Wilhelm Schmidt, was a century ahead of its time. Orgone energy is an unrecognized miracle of the natural universe. Jealous establishment authorities of that age failed to apply the healing power of orgone energy to deadly viral afflictions of the body. There is little chance, even with Trump urgings and support, that entrenched medical interests would seriously consider a fair test. Thus we must progress to:
Mutilateral Combinatory EHL: Trump urged a test of intense exposure to light (external and internal) and applications of heat energy to both weaken and ultimately defeat the corona virus. He was not allowed time to advance his thinking to multilateral applications of natural energy, to-wit: EMF, BTU, and IR-UV.
Herein we present the genius of the Trump EHL-3000 healing unit, a natural extension of Trump’s stream-of-consciousness thinking. This device, integrated into a patient-friendly chair, applies three forms of critically-essential healing energy both directly and indirectly to the patient, routed through the critical pathways of the body along its natural course, head to toe, leaving no area untreated.
A careful examination of the device will note the elegant simplicity of the cranial dome, the gentle arm restraints, the natural seating position of the patient, and the careful restraint of the legs to assure the feet remain in optimum energy-contact position.
As precisely applied levels of electrical energy are released into the massive life-threatening infection rampant in the patient’s body, great quantities of thermal energy begin to be released. In time, given sufficient EMF, a full spectrum of light also becomes readily apparent in a spectrum of therapeutic frequencies from infrared to ultraviolet. No known virus of any pandemic variety is able to long resist the assault of nature’s miracle triumvirate of energies: electrical, thermal, and light radiation.
For a proof of concept illustration showing an actual demonstration of the prototype Trump EHL-3000 healing unit, see: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Kemmler_ex%C3%A9cut%C3%A9_par_l%27%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9.jpg