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Saturday, April 25, 2020 10:38:00 AM
Trump’s Suggestion That Disinfectants Could Be Used to Treat Coronavirus Prompts Aggressive Pushback
Responding to the criticism from public health officials around the country, the president said he was playing a trick on reporters.
Reckitt Benckiser, the British company that makes Lysol and Dettol, warned customers on Friday against using disinfectants as treatments.Credit...Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images
By Katie Rogers, Christine Hauser, Alan Yuhas and Maggie Haberman
Published April 24, 2020
Updated April 25, 2020, 12:51 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — In Maryland, so many callers flooded a health hotline with questions that the state’s Emergency Management Agency had to issue a warning that “under no circumstances” should any disinfectant be taken to treat the coronavirus. In Washington State, officials urged people not to consume laundry detergent capsules.
Across the country on Friday, health professionals sounded the alarm.
Injecting bleach or highly concentrated rubbing alcohol “causes massive organ damage and the blood cells in the body to basically burst,” Dr. Diane P. Calello, the medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, said in an interview. “It can definitely be a fatal event.”
Even the makers of Clorox and Lysol pleaded with Americans not to inject or ingest their products.
The frantic reaction was prompted by President Trump’s suggestion on Thursday at a White House briefing that an “injection inside” the human body with a disinfectant like bleach or isopropyl alcohol could help combat the virus.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute,” Mr. Trump said after a presentation from William N. Bryan, an acting under secretary for science at the Department of Homeland Security, detailed the virus’s possible susceptibility to bleach and alcohol.
“One minute,” the president said. “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.”
Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was sitting to the side in the White House briefing room, blinking hard and looking at the floor as he spoke. Later, Mr. Trump asked her if she knew about “the heat and the light” as a potential cure.
“Not as a treatment,” Dr. Birx said, adding, “I haven’t seen heat or light —” before the president cut her off.
Mr. Trump’s remarks caused an immediate uproar, and the White House spent much of Friday trying to walk them back. Also Friday, the Food and Drug Administration warned that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, two drugs that the president has repeatedly recommended in treating the coronavirus, can cause dangerous abnormalities in heart rhythm in coronavirus patients and has resulted in some deaths.
The F.D.A. said the drugs should be used only in clinical trials or hospitals where patients can be closely monitored for heart problems.
“Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines,” Kayleigh McEnany, the new White House press secretary, said in a statement criticizing the coverage of Thursday night’s briefing.
Latest Updates: Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S.
- Trump’s remarks on disinfectants prompt a scramble from doctors, manufacturers, and his party.
- Three states are moving to reopen. But the path ahead is far from simple.
- Most coronavirus antibody tests are found wanting by researchers.
See more updates
Updated 29m ago
More live coverage: Global Markets New York
But the president later undermined her argument by insisting that his question to Mr. Bryan in fact had been an elaborate prank that he had engineered to trick reporters.
But the president later undermined her argument by insisting that his question to Mr. Bryan in fact had been an elaborate prank that he had engineered to trick reporters.
“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,” Mr. Trump said on Friday to journalists gathered in the Oval Office. The president said he had posed his theory on cleaning the body with disinfectant “in the form of a sarcastic question to a reporter,” which also was not true — he had said it unprompted to Mr. Bryan.
With more questions likely at the Friday briefing, Vice President Mike Pence, the head of the White House coronavirus task force, abruptly ended it shortly after it began.
Several White House officials said they shared the view that Mr. Trump had been taken out of context, even as they acknowledged that his comments were problematic. They noted that the president had later directed the same comments to Dr. Birx, and suggested them as a course of study, as opposed to a recommendation of a course of action for the American public.
But they acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s delivery was too sloppy for a president in the middle of managing the response to a pandemic that has killed over 45,000 Americans. .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Some said it was one of the worst days in one of the worst weeks of his presidency.
[...]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/us/politics/trump-inject-disinfectant-bleach-coronavirus.html
Responding to the criticism from public health officials around the country, the president said he was playing a trick on reporters.
Reckitt Benckiser, the British company that makes Lysol and Dettol, warned customers on Friday against using disinfectants as treatments.Credit...Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images
By Katie Rogers, Christine Hauser, Alan Yuhas and Maggie Haberman
Published April 24, 2020
Updated April 25, 2020, 12:51 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — In Maryland, so many callers flooded a health hotline with questions that the state’s Emergency Management Agency had to issue a warning that “under no circumstances” should any disinfectant be taken to treat the coronavirus. In Washington State, officials urged people not to consume laundry detergent capsules.
Across the country on Friday, health professionals sounded the alarm.
Injecting bleach or highly concentrated rubbing alcohol “causes massive organ damage and the blood cells in the body to basically burst,” Dr. Diane P. Calello, the medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, said in an interview. “It can definitely be a fatal event.”
Even the makers of Clorox and Lysol pleaded with Americans not to inject or ingest their products.
The frantic reaction was prompted by President Trump’s suggestion on Thursday at a White House briefing that an “injection inside” the human body with a disinfectant like bleach or isopropyl alcohol could help combat the virus.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute,” Mr. Trump said after a presentation from William N. Bryan, an acting under secretary for science at the Department of Homeland Security, detailed the virus’s possible susceptibility to bleach and alcohol.
“One minute,” the president said. “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.”
Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was sitting to the side in the White House briefing room, blinking hard and looking at the floor as he spoke. Later, Mr. Trump asked her if she knew about “the heat and the light” as a potential cure.
“Not as a treatment,” Dr. Birx said, adding, “I haven’t seen heat or light —” before the president cut her off.
Mr. Trump’s remarks caused an immediate uproar, and the White House spent much of Friday trying to walk them back. Also Friday, the Food and Drug Administration warned that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, two drugs that the president has repeatedly recommended in treating the coronavirus, can cause dangerous abnormalities in heart rhythm in coronavirus patients and has resulted in some deaths.
The F.D.A. said the drugs should be used only in clinical trials or hospitals where patients can be closely monitored for heart problems.
“Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines,” Kayleigh McEnany, the new White House press secretary, said in a statement criticizing the coverage of Thursday night’s briefing.
Latest Updates: Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S.
- Trump’s remarks on disinfectants prompt a scramble from doctors, manufacturers, and his party.
- Three states are moving to reopen. But the path ahead is far from simple.
- Most coronavirus antibody tests are found wanting by researchers.
See more updates
Updated 29m ago
More live coverage: Global Markets New York
But the president later undermined her argument by insisting that his question to Mr. Bryan in fact had been an elaborate prank that he had engineered to trick reporters.
But the president later undermined her argument by insisting that his question to Mr. Bryan in fact had been an elaborate prank that he had engineered to trick reporters.
“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,” Mr. Trump said on Friday to journalists gathered in the Oval Office. The president said he had posed his theory on cleaning the body with disinfectant “in the form of a sarcastic question to a reporter,” which also was not true — he had said it unprompted to Mr. Bryan.
With more questions likely at the Friday briefing, Vice President Mike Pence, the head of the White House coronavirus task force, abruptly ended it shortly after it began.
Several White House officials said they shared the view that Mr. Trump had been taken out of context, even as they acknowledged that his comments were problematic. They noted that the president had later directed the same comments to Dr. Birx, and suggested them as a course of study, as opposed to a recommendation of a course of action for the American public.
But they acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s delivery was too sloppy for a president in the middle of managing the response to a pandemic that has killed over 45,000 Americans. .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Some said it was one of the worst days in one of the worst weeks of his presidency.
[...]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/us/politics/trump-inject-disinfectant-bleach-coronavirus.html
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