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Journalism of Courage
Even as doctors and scientists around the world work to find a vaccine or cure for Covid-19, US President Donald Trump Thursday suggested some pretty unusual solutions. Trump said absorbing sunlight and injecting disinfectants might help fight the virus that has killed over 1.9 lakh people worldwide.
During his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House, Trump touted new research from his Department of Homeland Security that suggested sunlight, heat and humidity could kill the virus. This despite top health officials not confirming the findings or performing any relevant studies on these subjects.
“There’s been a rumour that — you know, a very nice rumour — that you go outside in the sun or you have heat and it does have an effect on other viruses,” Trump said. Then he turned to his coronavirus task force coordinator Dr Deborah Birx and asked her “to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure, you know, if you could.”
“So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light,” Trump said before the members of the press. “And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way and I think you said you’re going to test that too.”
Dr Birx spoke instead of how getting a fever was a good sign that the body was reacting to the virus.
After Bill Bryan, the acting undersecretary of science and technology for the Department of Homeland Security, talked about experiments in which, he said, disinfectants like bleach and isopropyl alcohol quickly killed the virus, Trump wondered aloud if disinfectants could be used as a treatment, asking whether there is “a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning.”
When pressed further by reporters about his claims, Trump termed some of the questions ‘fake news’.
Many experts weighed in his opinion and warned people that there are several countries in the tropics with high temperature that are also seeing a rapid spread of the virus and there’s no evidence heat will slow its spread.
His claims created a huge buzz on social media and many people asked the US president to keep his medical advice to himself.
https://twitter.com/BriannaWu/status/1253468203222814720
https://twitter.com/TheTweetwit/status/1253470483460186113
https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1253448767824711682
https://twitter.com/vicsepulveda/status/1253484899035566085
It’s not the first time Trump has made public claims about the sun’s healing powers. During a campaign rally in New Hampshire in February, he had said, “You know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. Hope that’s true.”
