Trump Suggests Injecting Disinfectant Into The Human Body To Treat Coronavirus, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The President's Daily Pandemic Briefing Was Endangering Americans Only Indirectly

WASHINGTON. Citing the urgent need to bring the nation fresh thinking, President Donald J. Trump used Thursday's televised coronavirus task force briefing to propose that Americans infected with the virus be treated by introducing household disinfectant into their bodies, resolving a long-standing concern that the daily White House briefing was endangering the public only through misinformation and not yet through direct chemical means.

The suggestion came moments after a Department of Homeland Security official presented findings that sunlight and disinfectant degrade the virus on surfaces. Building on the research in real time, and without consulting the physicians standing several feet away, the President observed that disinfectant "knocks it out in a minute," and asked aloud whether there might be "a way we can do something like that, by injection inside, or almost a cleaning." He further wondered whether a powerful light could be brought "inside the body," a possibility he noted "sounds interesting."

The nation's poison control centers, public health officials, and manufacturers of cleaning products responded within hours, each issuing statements advising Americans not to ingest, inject, or otherwise internalize bleach. Administration aides described the wave of warnings as evidence that the briefing had successfully started a national conversation. The maker of Lysol urged the public, under no circumstances, to follow the medical guidance it had just received from the President of the United States.

"I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters just to see what would happen," the President explained the following day, offering a clarification that itself required clarification. Sources within the administration confirmed that the briefings, originally intended to inform the public during the deadliest health emergency in a century, had been performing that function less and less reliably, and that officials had come to regard each evening's session chiefly as a block of unscripted national airtime that needed filling.

By the time the President suggested the disinfectant treatment, tens of thousands of Americans had already died of the virus, a figure the administration addressed by noting that the toll could have been far higher and by redirecting attention to the size of the television audience the briefings were drawing. The toll would surpass 400,000 by the end of his term.

At press time, the President had assembled the task force, the cameras, and the American people for another briefing, and was reported to be thinking out loud.