Sure, for a kid in third grade. But any grown up should know that UV is somehow linked to skin cancer and that disinfectants have those strange scary warning symbols on them, indicating they are rather unsafe things to use inside bodies.

I mean, happy for him to have those discussions with the experts (as long as it's not me sitting there), but do not do this on live TV.

Radiation also causes cancer, yet we have radiotherapy. I mean this is really basic, think-a-tiny-bit-below-the-surface stuff that anyone not afflicted by TDS seems capable of.

If anything, TDS is the continued mental gymnastics required to paint his actions in anything resembling a positive light.

The man was literally following up on a conversation about UV and bleach being used as disinfectant on surfaces and then suggested that they might be a good for use on humans. Chemotherapy would sound crazy on it's face - and in a lot of ways it still is, people do die from chemo - but the push for further research for chemo was done by scientists and researchers who had a grasp on why and how it could be of use as a treatment.

It's also disingenuous to compare chemotherapy with injecting disinfectant. It is trivially easy for someone to inject themselves with disinfectant. It is not trivially easy for someone to give themselves chemotherapy. Trump's verbiage here is also the same as his playbook on chloroquine over the past few weeks - frame things as questions to be asked, but then pepper it all with words like "great" and "powerful"

It's the same way he operates on every single subject he's a fan of but can't come outright and say that he likes and wants you to think that way or believe in it. This is nothing new, and neither are the backflips and contortions people go through to try and justify it.

And, fundamentally, your entire argument falls apart now that Trump himself is claiming it was just a sarcastic joke, and that he was never ever suggesting that it's something we should do or even research. He's trying to walk back the statement and pretend he didn't mean anything by it at all except to be mocking because of how stupid the comment was.

So just to clarify, your position is that Trump literally told people to inject themselves with disinfectant? And that this was part of some plan of his, something from his playbook?

Trump said it was a joke today - if you saw the original video he sort of chuckled when he followed up on the UV treatment idea with the suggestion that disinfectant could be used inside the body, turning to his team and saying "but you'd have to use medical doctors for that". Maybe that's what he was referring to, or maybe it was some later exchange. Regardless, the original context was simply that scientists presented some findings about what kills the virus, and Trump followed up with some questions about whether they could lead to some new types of treatment. That's it. The rest is a game of Get Trump.

Do you recall the last time a head of state discussed on live TV the usefulness of bathing in the reactor pool of a live nuclear reactor to cure cancer? I don't.

Funny thing is, this would actually be pretty save [1], especially compared to anyone ingesting disinfectants. And it's orders of magnitudes easier to access disinfectants than reactor pools [2].

[1] https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ [2] That is an educated guess, actually.

[Edit: Grammar]

But notice that Trump didn’t suggest that anyone bathe in reactor pools, instead he asked the scientist if it would be possible to harness UV radiation for some kind of treatment.

That sort of spitballing and lateral thinking is great in a brainstorming session around a table. These press conferences are meant to be public service announcements/Q&A sessions.

I think you know this already.

If chemotherapy had been suggested by the president at the time going on TV and saying "it might be a good idea if people drank poison", _with no basis for that assumption_, then, well, yes, that would have been pretty crazy, and would have lead to a lot of unnecessary death.

Also, of course, lobotomies probably sounded crazy the first time someone suggested them. And as it turns out, they were. For everything that sounds crazy and works, there are a lot of things that sound crazy and prove to be crazy.

But he didn't say that. He had a scientist up to announce promising results, and he suggested some avenues for further research or invention. At no point did he turn to the camera and say "so you see folks, if you're worried about the coronavirus, just reach into your kitchen cupboard and pour yourself a nice glass of bleach." I don't know why you're pretending otherwise.

It is not the president’s job to suggest avenues for further medical research on live TV, especially if the suggestions are stupid and life-threatening.

We already have enough on our hands with the pandemic, so let’s try to avoid getting more people in the ER.

Who said it’s not the president’s job to show scientific progress to the public and engender discussion of new ideas? I realise many people are very used to dry, carefully stage-managed government briefings written in ObamaScript, but being spontaneous and discursive has its advantages.

Many medical interventions are dangerous by nature - doesn’t and shouldn’t stop people discussing new possibilities for investigation, which is what happened here.

You're offering up a very charitable interpretation to a man that has been saying to take chloroquine and asking "What have you go to lose?" for several weeks now, despite the fact that we know that while chloroquine is relatively safe for most people, there are serious potential side effects including blindness and heart failure that can occur. So, the answer for to his question is "my sight" and "my life", which are, at least in my opinion, significant enough things to risk that he should't be telling people to take the drug.

Why would we expect this to be anything more than more of the same? I know in HN we are supposed to give each other the benefit of the doubt, but we're well beyond benefit of the doubt here - you're asking us to check our critical thinking skills at the door and to ignore past actions - from the very recent past!

You say I'm being very charitable. This is what I see:

- President brings scientist on stage to talk about new findings that will help combat COVID-19. Why? Because it's important to show people that progress is being made and we're not in a hopeless situation.

- President follows up with the scientist with questions about possible therapies that could be developed. He uses words like 'would it be possible to', 'could we somehow', 'and 'it would be interesting to check that.'

To me that's just a natural reading, given the context. Your reading appears to be:

- President brings scientists on stage to talk about findings

- President recommends that people inject themselves with Dettol (motive unclear)

The problem is that's a ridiculously uncharitable interpretation. I mean, is that what you actually believe the president was thinking?

The (hydroxy)chloroquine is example is also a non-issue. Trump correctly pointed out that this was a low-cost, long circulated drug with well understood risks, and that even if we don't yet know for sure if it works, if patients are dying from the virus, it makes sense for doctors to try it. I'm glad he shone a spotlight on it.

>The problem is that's a ridiculously uncharitable interpretation. I mean, is that what you actually believe the president was thinking?

Yes. If not outright recommending it, bringing it up as a somewhat viable possibility. Poison control hotlines have been fielding hundreds of calls asking if it is safe to ingest or inject disinfectant.

>The (hydroxy)chloroquine is example is also a non-issue. Trump correctly pointed out that this was a low-cost, long circulated drug with well understood risks, and that even if we don't yet know for sure if it works, if patients are dying from the virus, it makes sense for doctors to try it. I'm glad he shone a spotlight on it.

Those well understood risks include heart failure and blindness. Trump asked "What have you got to lose?" when saying "I think you should take it", and the answer is my sight and my life. There was no solid medical evidence at that time that chloroquine had any impact on coronavirus in vivo, and what we're finding now is that the null hypothesis is still the best supported in that regard, and that it causes an increase in all cause mortality, to the point where several studies have had to stop because the people they were giving hydroxychloroquine people were dying from heart failure, and the best completed study we have showed a nearly 3x increase in all cause mortality among those taking hydroxychloroquine vs. the control.

It was reckless and irresponsible, exactly like this.

>(motive unclear)

The motive is extremely clear. Trump is worried about a wrecked economy ruining his re-election chances. He wants to open the economy back up to improve his chances, so getting people to believe that we have a plethora of solutions to novel coronavirus helps him achieve that goal.

OK, if you actually think the president was recommending that people start injecting themselves at home, rather than asking a scientist if there could be experiments to develop a new treatment, then we’re simply not experiencing the same reality, so not much point in discussing further.

Trump never suggested people should start injecting any chemical in their bodies. It was the MEDIA that told people that Trump suggested they inject chemicals in their body. If anyone actually injects chemicals in their body, it is likely because the media told them Trump told them to. So the blood will be on the media's hands.