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WASHINGTON: Top White House coronavirus adviser Deborah Birx shrank in horror and around the nation comedians sharpened their pens: President Donald Trump had just asked if virus victims couldn’t be injected with disinfectant.
Even as a new poll shows most Americans wish the former real estate magnate would leave science to the experts, Trump on Thursday evening hit a new high in the annals of amateur presidential doctoring.
Encouraged by tentative findings that summer weather may dampen the novel coronavirus, Trump used his daily live press briefing to ask whether light could become a medical treatment.
“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said. “Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.”
Birx and another government medical expert looked on warily. The president wasn’t finished. “Then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks (the virus) 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.”
Birx winced and turned her eyes from the president to the floor.
Trump’s actual comments about disinfectants were quickly savaged in memes and jokes on Twitter.
“’Hey guys!!! It’s Dettol o’clock!!!’” said one tweet alongside a picture of a glass filled with cleaner on the rocks. Another tweet looked forward to “breakfast of nice chilled toilet cleaner.”
The British-based manufacturer of Lysol and Dettol felt compelled to put out a statement: “Under no circumstances should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body through injection, ingestion or any other route,” the company, Reckitt Benckiser, said.
Trump’s claims to medical expertise are also endless fuel for late night comedy routines. “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert had just taped an impersonation of the president touting Listerine mouthwash as a remedy on Thursday before the briefing took place.