Bizarre

By now we've all surely heard  our Idiot In Chief propose fighting covid 19 with antiseptics like bleach. No, not on surfaces, where it has efficacy. On us. Scratch that: IN us! Inject, inhale, swallow, whatever.

Knowing how many idiots hop on his bandwagon, Lysol felt compelled to issue a very public disclaimer that it should NEVER be ingested. They must have assumed that those stupid enough to give it a try never heard about gassing in the trenches in WW1, never read the label about using in ventilated areas, or heard the warnings about combining bleach and ammonia because it releases chlorine gas. And after all, people poisoning themselves with Tide pods is a real thing. Those kinds of people are out there.

I think they've got a pretty good basis for believing they needed to make that disclaimer. So do the vast majority of us. We already put locks on the cabinets where we store similar chemicals when there are babies and toddlers in the house. Can our Idiot In Chief magically make those poisons not only safe but a virus cure?

Well, of course they would cure the virus. Covid 19 can't survive without a living body. Other similar cures would be bullets, hanging, driving your car into a bridge embankment at 95 mph, a full bottle of any of many medications downed with your booze, stepping in front of the subway or a train or....

Well, lots of cures. Now those would finally justify those signs about the cure being worse than the disease.

I kinda get where he's coming from though. Obviously we're not there yet, but wouldn't it be wonderful if there were something they could put in an inhaler like we do with albuterol, only geared to kill this virus? However....

We're just beginning to realize how necessary to human life microorganisms are. We'd have to find something which only targets this virus and leaves everything else alone. At this point, this is beyond daunting. We'd likely need one of those Star Trek transporters, carefully programmed to beam us up without all those nasty little covid particles. (They had an episode years ago like that. DS9 perhaps?) Then we'd just have to solve the problem of preventing us all from getting reinfected, since nobody would have antibodies.

Bummer!

I have further questions. Remember early on they said donating blood was OK, that the virus was only in the respiratory system? So how does that tally with finding out now that other effects of the virus include cardiac arrhythmia, blood clotting causing embolisms and strokes, kidney damage, and who-knows-what else they will discover? Why do we lose smell and taste, have all-over muscle aches, gastrointestinal issues?

Big problems are never simple. In some form or another they are systemic. Insert any name for the problem, you'll have nearly countless causes and interactions. Big problems have their own ecosystems. Poverty, poor education, homelessness, unemployment, overcrowding, pollution, global warming. Even hurricanes, where our Idiot In Chief thought nuking them would dispel them. Like every other problem/solution combination, "cures" have consequences. Not only would a nuke not work to diminish hurricane forces, it would spread radiation. I know: DUH! Well, for us, anyway. Too obvious to bother to mention.

Except for the guy who thought it was a good idea. On television. "Advising" the country.

Bringing it back to healthcare, here's another example of consequences: immunizations. What could be wrong about eliminating smallpox? Or freeing us from polio, measles, chicken pox, tetanus, etc., etc., etc.

Overpopulation, for one. We live longer and with better lives, but keep reproducing. Overpopulation MANDATES new pandemics arise, since we're no longer isolated enough from other populations to keep whatever latest germ which evolves from spreading widely and with lightning speed.

False security, for another. We forget what we have to learn about in books rather than experience ourselves. This gives rise to the anti-vaxxers, more concerned with extremely rare or imagined effects of a shot than with a disease people now don't have immunity to. Measles is a name with an inconvenient rash, rather than a death threat.

It is a death threat.

UV light, our Idiot In Chief's other suggestion, actually will kill virus. Sunlight is its major source. Objects left in the sun long enough will be cleaned of it. Whoa Pony, before you gallop away with that idea for your cure-all....

We're not objects. UV light, to us, will cause cancer. Need that in your lungs on top of the virus? It won't kill as fast as bleach inside us. But it will kill. Like your odds on that one?

There is no magic.