Trump takes good news on disinfectants and gives it an insane spin

Enlarge / Bleach works great on surfaces, not inside your body. (credit: NurPhoto / Getty Images)

The daily pandemic press briefings held by the White House have had some very unusual moments, with medical experts often asked to correct misinformation or bad advice, some of it offered or favored by President Trump himself, standing just feet away. But those somewhat surreal scenes had become so commonplace that the events may have started to seem routine. But any normalcy changed yesterday, when, after receiving some good news from the research community, Trump suddenly suggested that we should test the idea of irradiating people internally or injecting them with disinfectant.

Before the day was over, the maker of Lysol disinfectant was issuing statements saying there are no circumstances in which its products should be ingested or injected.

We’ll do the good news first

The trouble was triggered by a rare bit of good news amid this global pandemic, delivered by Bill Bryan, the head of the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate. Bryan was brought on to discuss the survival of the virus under various environmental conditions. (You can watch his presentation here.)