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Jess Piper: Don’t Forget Rural Democrats

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2024 //
19

Jess Piper is a Democratic activist in rural Missouri. She is a fierce advocate for rural communities and public schools. She lives on a farm where she and her husband raise hogs and chickens. She blogs, she makes videos for TikTok, she tweets, she hosts a podcast called Dirt Road Democrats and is executive director of Blue Missouri. She taught American literature for 16 years. She often writes about the absurdity of vouchers and school choice. In this post, she goes to towns in her district to gather signatures to restore abortion rights in Missouri..

I live at the tippy top of NWMO on a small 7 acre farm in a 125 year old farmhouse with a few dogs, a couple cows, a gaggle of kids and grandkids, and a miniature donkey. Everyone perks up when I mention the donkey…he’s 36 inches high and his name is Augustus.

I drive across the state often these days and I am usually headed to a small town and this week was no different—I visited Chillicothe (the home of sliced bread), Carrolton, and Marceline and you’ll never guess why. I was getting rural folks and their Bible groups to sign the petition to restore abortion rights in Missouri.

Dirt Road organizing.

Missouri is in the process of putting abortion on the ballot and I have the petition—I have to tell you it’s kind of hard to get a petition, so I was excited to get them and also overwhelmed. I have to get this out to rural folks, and it’s not as easy as it would seem. 

First, there is the opposition to the petition—the Missouri Right to Life (Right to force others to gestate and deliver) has a literal snitch line to report folks accepting signatures. Now, I have no idea what they plan to do if they find us accepting signatures. I was raised to take care of myself and they shouldn’t mess with me, and I’m not the least bit intimidated, but I don’t want them to harass other rural folks who are signing quietly.

Second, folks have written off my congressional district—even some progressives who need signatures on a ballot initiative. They assume that we are too red to get enough signatures, so what’s the point, right? I’ll tell you the point: it creates excitement and solidarity in rural spaces. It acts to uplift us living in among MAGA extremists. It gives us hope.

Chillicothe was my first stop, and it is a pretty big town at over 9K folks. Chilli is also known for having a “patriot” group who have been successful in putting their extremists on the local health board — they also regularly object to school library books. Folks were on long text chains to get others to the event. I was able to gather about 30 signatures on a Tuesday at 9am. 

I was directing folks to the petition and how to fill it in correctly. One woman filled it out, stood up, and started texting. She told me, “I’m reminding my Bible group to come sign.” 

Wait…what?

The second place I drove was Carrolton, with a population of about 3,400. Still not tiny, but small. I sat in the basement of the library for almost 2 hours with…wait for it…a local pastor. A woman pastor. She signed the petition and then stayed the length of the signing event and visited with every single person who came in. Several folks attended her church or a neighboring church. 

Are you seeing a theme here?

My last stop of the day was in Marceline, population 2,100. I sat in the fire station with a local Dem organizer and we accepted signatures a few feet from the active train crossing. I met with a local candidate running for state house and again, folks signed, stood up, texted friends and relatives and their church community, and then headed back out to their farms and rural life.

This is why I organize in rural spaces across the state. This is why I drive 5 or 6 or 10 hours to meet with rural folks. They matter—we matter.

When we cede ground because it’s too red, because it’s too evangelical, because it’s too far of a drive, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s become more red, more uncontested. When we tell rural folks that their votes and signatures don’t matter because there aren’t enough of them, they agree and stop showing up. When we say Democrats and progressives support everyone, yet fail to have a presence in rural spaces, they notice…they know it’s a lie.

We can’t win Missouri if we avoid rural parts of the state. Missouri is 1/3 rural…33% of the state is outstate. 

I’m here and so are thousands of my friends. If state-level organizers will remember us, we can bring sanity back to the entire state.

Dirt Road Democrats are here.

~Jess

Categories Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Gender, Missouri, Science

Florida: “Surgeon General” Fails to Tell Students to Get Vaccinated Against Measles

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2024 //
29

Certain counties in Florida are experiencing an outbreak of measles, a highly contagious and sometimes lethal that was supposedly under control due to widespread vaccination.

Florida’s top doctor, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has thus far failed to instruct students in the affected schools to get vaccinated because he and Governor DeSantis took a strong stand against getting vaccinated for COVID.

The Miami Herald editorial board criticized Dr. Ladapo for putting students at risk:

Is there one mainstream piece of public health advice — no matter how long-standing — that Florida’s top doctor won’t buck?

Joseph Ladapo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-vaxx surgeon general, has spread misinformation about COVID-19 and has advised against coronavirus vaccines, citing debunked claims. 

Perhaps Ladapo saw, in the novelty and divisiveness of the pandemic, an opportunity to become the go-to, Ivy League-educated doctor for vaccine deniers. Now, he’s turned his focus to a long-known virus — up until now, largely non-controversial, but highly contagious and dangerous for children: measles.

Following an outbreak at Manatee Bay Elementary in Weston, where six measles cases have been confirmed, Ladapo sent a letter to parents that pediatricians, immunologists and infectious disease experts have criticized. The letter acknowledged what has been common practice to contain measles outbreaks — that unvaccinated children or those without immunity should remain home during the incubation period of the virus, or up to 21 days. 

Ladapo, then, however, wrote that, “due to the high immunity rate in the community,” the Department of Health “is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.”

This should have been Ladapo’s opportunity to tell parents, “Get your children vaccinated — now!”

The MMR vaccine, approved by the federal government more than 50 years ago, offers 98% protection against measles after two full doses. That’s a widely known statistic that not even Ladapo can deny — he acknowledges it in his letter but stops short of recommending the vaccines. 

Instead, Florida’s top doctor is telling parents it’s OK to send kids to school sans immunization, even though they could contract a potentially lethal virus or spread it to others who are also not immunized. Worse, the Broward County school outbreak could spread to other communities…

The vaccine skepticism that gained force during the pandemic, thanks in part to public figures like DeSantis and Ladapo, is a threat to not only public-health efforts to keep COVID at bay but other diseases we thought belonged in a bygone era.

Many states (most?) require children to get vaccinated against a long list of diseases before they can start school. Apparently, Florida is not one of them. The state lets parents decide. Public health, be dammed!

Categories DeSantis, Ethics, Florida, Health, Science

Florida: Orlando Sentinel Denounces a Bill to Declare “Fetal Personhood”

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2024 //
17

The editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel spoke out against a bill that would declare fetuses to be persons from the instant of conception. Not only would this extend Florida’s draconian six-week ban on abortion, it would outlaw abortion for any reason—rape, incest, the life of the mother. Even if a woman learns early in her pregnancy that the fetus will be born without a brain or has some other fatal defect, she will not be able to terminate the pregnancy. At this time, the Florida Supreme Court is deciding whether to allow a referendum on abortion to proceed; its sponsors have collected over one million signatures. Will the people of Florida have a chance to express their views?

The editorial board wrote:

For Floridians who are already deeply uneasy about women losing the right to control their own bodies, what happened Wednesday in the House Judiciary Committee was truly terrifying. One by one, lawmakers voted yes on legislation that would, for the first time, declare fetuses to be people from the moment of conception — turning wombs into war zones before most people even know they are pregnant.

Bill sponsor Jenna Persons-Mulicka, R-Fort Myers, did her best to hide the radical nature of her legislation, which creates civil liability for anyone who causes the “wrongful death” of a fetus in utero. But everyone in that committee hearing room — and those watching remotely — knew exactly what was at stake. Conveying full rights on a fetus would be a shattering blow to reproductive independence for Floridians capable of becoming pregnant, reaching past debates over viability and bans on abortion at a specified number of weeks. HB 651 would kick in at the very start of a pregnancy, and create an easy stepping stone from wrongful deaths (including from abortions) to anything that threatens the health of a fetus, even if it is meant to benefit the mother’s health.

Floridians should bombard their state senators and representatives with messages letting them know that this potential law is far too radical for anyone who cares about freedom. Then they should turn to their congressional representatives and call on them for legislation to nip this hazardous movement in the bud.

They can start by letting lawmakers know they see through the pretense here. Persons-Mulicka pointed out, more than once, that the language of her legislation (HB 651) specifically excludes a pregnant person. But that’s a nearly negligible speed bump, especially if Florida’s Supreme Court picks up this theme and uses it to obliterate abortion rights in Florida.

Think they won’t? Think again. Justice Carlos Muniz was already hinting in that direction last week, during oral arguments over a ballot question that would (with voters’ approval) explicitly protect abortion rights in Florida.

But advocates of so-called “fetal personhood” think they’ve found a way around that language. By declaring a fetus to be a person, the Legislature and/or court would at best set up a collision course between two competing interests that just happen to share a body — along with the well-being of medical personnel being asked to care for both.

Because the fetal personhood bill does not protect the doctors, nurses and other people who perform abortions, even if the procedure is otherwise legal. Taken in context, that looming threat is clearly a large portion of the intention behind this bill…

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Science

Alexandra Petri: Congratulations! That Cluster of Cells is a child!

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2024 //
38

Alexandra Petri is a humorist for The Washington Post. She wrote today about the crazy decision by the Alabama Supreme Court that a frozen embryo (a fertilized egg) is a child. Destroying the frozen embryo is murder.

She begins:

Having kids is nothing like they tell you it will be! How tiny they are, and how you can hardly see them without a microscope. How you can’t hold them, not even once. How they don’t have anything that could be regarded, even optimistically, as a laugh, or a face. Isn’t being a parent the best? Isn’t it laughably cruel that the Alabama Supreme Court says that this is already a child? That this cluster of hopeful cells that you have been dreaming could become a baby is actually a person already? You would be laughing, if you could stop crying.

What an appallingly cruel thing to say to people already going through so much to have a child, people who were prepared to endure the grueling in vitro fertilization process of treatments and injections and embryo development before their pregnancy could even begin. What a ridiculous thing to say to anyone with a modicum of sense.

Don’t believe the evidence of your senses. Embryos are children. Flour is cake. These acorns are an old-growth forest. This half-baked insulting nonsense of a ruling is justice.

You know what they always say about people: They are invisible to the naked eye and can be stored conveniently in vials in a hospital freezer. They are discernible only to God and the Alabama judiciary. You don’t need to feed them, ever. They don’t need books. They don’t need clean water or fresh air or sunshine — in fact, they couldn’t survive a minute outside the glass dish.

How did the Alabama judges know? God told them.

Trump came out against the Alabama decision, and most Republicans are rapidly backtracking. They say they want motmre children to be born, and IVF is good. Now that Trump has given his blessing to IVF, watch the Republicans pivot. only poor Nikki Haley is left out in the cold, because her snap reaction was to praise the decision.

Categories Alabama, Childhood, Humor, Religion, Science

These Tanks Are Storing Tens of Thousands of Frozen Embryos

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2024 //
28
Nitrogen tanks held tens of thousands of frozen embryos and eggs at a fertility lab in New York. CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Do you think that the judges on the Alabama Supreme Court ever saw a storage room in an IVF Clinic that was holding tens of thousands of “extrauterine” children in containers?

The New Republic provided context for the Alabama ruling that frozen embryos are children.

For the first time, a frozen embryo has been recognized by the law as a person with rights. This decision by the Alabama Supreme Court last week is a huge victory for anti-abortion groups, who have long sought to pass fetal personhood laws. This time, by declaring not just a fetus but a fertilized egg in a lab the equivalent of an “unborn child,” the courts have done them one better. If this keeps up, anti-abortion groups may succeed at outlawing both abortion and in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

This case was about whether couples whose embryos have been inadvertently destroyed in a lab can sue for wrongful death. The embryos in question are eggs that have been fertilized outside the uterus and cryopreserved by a fertility clinic for later implantation. The couples’ attorneys cast embryos cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen as “embryonic children” and “human lives.” They seem to have found a receptive audience on the Alabama Supreme Court, with the decision referring multiple times to what the majority called “extrauterine children.”

This case was the culmination of explicit anti-abortion campaigning. The judges based their ruling in part on a recent amendment to the state constitution, enshrining the “rights of unborn children” in law. When voters considered this amendment in a 2018 ballot initiative, the political director of the anti-abortion group Alliance for a Pro-Life Alabama told the Associated Press that the amendment would “position Alabama in the future for public policy decisions on abortion if Roe. v. Wade was overturned.” Indeed, the Christian-right legal advocacy organization that brought the case overturning Roe, Alliance Defending Freedom, celebrated the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in the IVF case, the group’s senior counsel adding they hoped “that this ruling encourages voters, lawmakers, and courts to recognize that life is a human right, no matter the circumstances.”

The article goes on to explain that the next frontier for the anti-abortion movement is embryo adoption.

Categories Alabama, Health, Science

Neuroscientist: We Are Thinking about Memory Loss the Wrong Way

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2024 //
38

Two elderly men are running for President this year. One is 81, the other is 77. Both of them make verbal mistakes, confusing one name for another or mixing up dates. Most of us, regardless of our age, have done the same. We usually call our mistakes “gaffes.”

Being President of the United States is not a television game show; what matters most is not instantaneous recall, but the ability to choose seasoned staff and to make wise decisions. For a President, judgment is what matters most.

Recently, a neuroscientist wrote about memory and aging in the New York Times and tried to clarify the issues. Charan Ranganath is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California.

Dr. Ranganath wrote:

Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s report, in which he declined to prosecute President Biden for his handling of classified documents, also included a much-debated assessment of Mr. Biden’s cognitive abilities.

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. In fact, most of the details of our lives — the people we meet, the things we do and the places we go — will inevitably be reduced to memories that capture only a small fraction of those experiences.

It is normal to be more forgetful as you get older. Broadly speaking, memory functions begin to decline in our 30s and continue to fade into old age. However, age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. And an apparent memory lapse may or may not be consequential depending on the reasons it occurred.

There is forgetting and there is Forgetting. If you’re over the age of 40, you’ve most likely experienced the frustration of trying to grasp hold of that slippery word hovering on the tip of your tongue. Colloquially, this might be described as ‘forgetting,’ but most memory scientists would call this “retrieval failure,” meaning that the memory is there, but we just can’t pull it up when we need it. On the other hand, Forgetting (with a capital F) is when a memory is seemingly lost or gone altogether. Inattentively conflating the names of the leaders of two countries would fall in the first category, whereas being unable to remember that you had ever met the president of Egypt would fall into the latter.

Over the course of typical aging, we see changes in the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, a brain area that plays a starring role in many of our day-to-day memory successes and failures. These changes mean that, as we get older, we tend to be more distractible and often struggle to pull up the word or name we’re looking for. Remembering events takes longer and it requires more effort, and we can’t catch errors as quickly as we used to. This translates to a lot more forgetting, and a little more Forgetting.

Many of the special counsel’s observations about Mr. Biden’s memory seem to fall in the category of forgetting, meaning that they are more indicative of a problem with finding the right information from memory than actual Forgetting. Calling up the date that an event occurred, like the last year of Mr. Biden’s vice presidency or the year of his son’s death, is a complex measure of memory. Remembering that an event took place is different than being able to put a date on when it happened, the latter of which is more challenging with increased age. The president very likely has many memories of both periods of his life, even though he could not immediately pull up the date in the stressful (and more immediately pressing) context of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Other “memory” issues highlighted in the media are not so much cases of forgetting as they are of difficulties in the articulation of facts and knowledge. For instance, in July 2023, Mr. Biden mistakenly stated in a speech that “we have over 100 people dead,” when he should have said, “over one million.” He has struggled with a stutter since childhood, and research suggests that managing a stutter demands prefrontal resources that would normally enable people to find the right word or at least quickly correct errors after the fact.

Americans are understandably concerned about the advanced age of the two top contenders in the coming presidential election (Mr. Biden is 81 and Donald Trump is 77), although some of these concerns are rooted in cultural stereotypes and fears around aging. The fact is that there is a huge degree of variability in cognitive aging. Age is, on average, associated with decreased memory, but studies that follow up the same person over several years have shown that, although some older adults show precipitous declines over time, other “super-agers” remain as sharp as ever.

Mr. Biden is the same age as Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese. He’s also a bit younger than Jane Fonda (86) and a lot younger than Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett (93). All these individuals are considered to be at the top of their professions, and yet I would not be surprised if they are more forgetful and absent-minded than when they were younger. In other words, an individual’s age does not say anything definitive about their cognitive status or where it will head in the near future.

I can’t speak to the cognitive status of any of the presidential candidates, but I can say that, rather than focusing on candidates’ ages per se, we should consider whether they have the capabilities to do the job. Public perception of a person’s cognitive state is often determined by superficial factors, such as physical presence, confidence, and verbal fluency, but these aren’t necessarily relevant to one’s capacity to make consequential decisions about the fate of this country. Memory is surely relevant, but other characteristics, such as knowledge of the relevant facts and emotion regulation — both of which are relatively preserved and might even improve with age — are likely to be of equal or greater importance.

Ultimately, we are due for a national conversation about what we should expect in terms of the cognitive and emotional health of our leaders.

And that should be informed by science, not politics

Categories Biden, Elections, Science, Trump

Abortion Foes Plan Onslaught of New Restrictions if Trump Wins

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2024 //
64

Well, that was fast!!

At 9 a.m. I posted about a New York Times article published yesterday revealing that Trump wanted a 16-week ban on abortions. Since 93% of abortions are performed by the 13th week of abortion, that would essentially render the Dobbs decision ineffective.

But Trump’s anti-abortion pals got wind of his intention and let it be known that they will play every trick in the book—including reviving an 1873 law—to make abortion illegal everywhere.

The New York Times reports today:

Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country.

Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.

“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”

Mr. Mitchell, who represented Mr. Trump in arguments before the Supreme Court over whether the former president could appear on the ballot in Colorado, indicated that anti-abortion strategists had purposefully been quiet about their more advanced plans, given the political liability the issue has become for Republicans.

“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election….”

In policy documents, private conversations and interviews, the plans described by former Trump administration officials, allies and supporters propose circumventing Congress and leveraging the regulatory powers of federal institutions, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Justice and the National Institutes of Health.

The effect would be to create a second Trump administration that would attack abortion rights and abortion access from a variety of angles and could be stopped only by courts that the first Trump administration had already stacked with conservative judges.

“He had the most pro-life administration in history and adopted the most pro-life policies of any administration in history,” said Roger Severino, a leader of anti-abortion efforts in Health and Human Services during the Trump administration. “That track record is the best evidence, I think, you could have of what a second term might look like if Trump wins.”

Categories Elections, Gender, Health, Science, Trump

Trump Supports National Ban on Abortion at 16 Weeks

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2024 //
24

The New York Times reported that Donald Trump has been telling friends privately that he supports a national ban on abortion at 16 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.

A 16-week national ban would eliminate the authority of some 30 states that do not have abortion bans, but it would cancel the highly restrictive laws of states like Florida that have enacted a six-week ban, that is, before women know they are pregnant, and Texas, where abortion has been outlawed.

Very clever! A 16-week ban would restore abortions wherever it has been prohibited.

A 16-week ban would not end many abortions: nearly 94 percent of abortions happen before 13 weeks in pregnancy, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control. Nor is such a ban grounded in medical research. Even 15 weeks falls before the point when significant screens take place in a pregnancy to examine the fetus for rare — but potentially fatal — conditions. Instead, it has become a position that some Republicans, based on polling, believe will be the most politically palatable to voters.

Trump makes clear that this is a political calculation. It would please many in red states who support abortion rights, and he could still say he was against abortion.

For most of his life, Trump has been pro-abortion but turned against it when he realized he needed the support of Catholics and Evangelicals.

He has boasted to his right flank that he delivered what he promised: a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.

But he recognizes that voters are angry about the loss of abortion rights, and Republicans are losing elections because of abortion restrictions.

So now, at his transactional best, he proposes a 16-week ban that enables almost every abortion to proceed at the same rate as before the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe. He would openly revive abortion, bypassing the Supreme Court.

I have this visual image of Trump looking at his anti-abortion followers and cynically smirking, “Fooled you! Hahaha.”

Categories Elections, Health, Science, Trump

How Many People Drank Bleach, as Trump Suggested?

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2024 //
38

During the outset of the pandemic, when Americans were frightened and confused about how to protect themselves from the deadly virus, President Trump held a news conference where he added his non-scientific opinion as to what people should do to avoid catching the highly contagious COVID. Trump believed in his deep knowledge of science because, he once said, he had an uncle who taught at MIT.

The New York Times reported that Trump’s suggestion about how to avoid COVID caused a large public response, as well as warnings from public health agencies:

WASHINGTON — In Maryland, so many callers flooded a health hotline with questions that the state’s Emergency Management Agency had to issue a warning that “under no circumstances” should any disinfectant be taken to treat the coronavirus. In Washington State, officials urged people not to consume laundry detergent capsules. Across the country on Friday, health professionals sounded the alarm.

Injecting bleach or highly concentrated rubbing alcohol “causes massive organ damage and the blood cells in the body to basically burst,” Dr. Diane P. Calello, the medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, said in an interview. “It can definitely be a fatal event.”

Even the makers of Clorox and Lysol pleaded with Americans not to inject or ingest their products.

The frantic reaction was prompted by President Trump’s suggestion on Thursday at a White House briefing that an “injection inside” the human body with a disinfectant like bleach or isopropyl alcohol could help combat the virus.

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute,” Mr. Trump said after a presentation from William N. Bryan, an acting under secretary for science at the Department of Homeland Security, detailed the virus’s possible susceptibility to bleach and alcohol.

“One minute,” the president said. “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. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was sitting to the side in the White House briefing room, blinking hard and looking at the floor as he spoke. Later, Mr. Trump asked her if she knew about “the heat and the light” as a potential cure.

“Not as a treatment,” Dr. Birx said, adding, “I haven’t seen heat or light —” before the president cut her off.

Mr. Trump’s remarks caused an immediate uproar, and the White House spent much of Friday trying to walk them back. Also Friday, the Food and Drug Administration warned that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, two drugs that the president has repeatedly recommended in treating the coronavirus, can cause dangerous abnormalities in heart rhythm in coronavirus patients and has resulted in some deaths.

Later, Trump insisted he was being sarcastic, not serious.

After Trump’s press conference, reports to poison control centers spiked.

Time magazine reported on a bulletin from the American Association of Poison Control Centers, which held that reports of poisoning from ingesting bleach and other disinfectants rose after Trump’s remarks.

The Hill reported a sharp increase in calls to poison control centers after Trump made his remarks.

The Michigan Poison Center reported an increase in calls to poison centers in at least five states after Trump’s remarks. The makers of Clorox and Lysol issued statements urging the public not to ingest their products.

The Harvard Business Review published an article asserting that we can never know for sure how many people drank bleach and how many died, because so many people who answer survey questions don’t understand the question or the answer.

The NIH concluded that no one died of ingesting bleach because 100% of those surveyed gave answers to the questions that were silly, mischievous, or ignorant. The author of the Harvard Business Review article was a contributing author to the NIH study.

Politico posted a reminiscence of the day that Trump recommended ingesting bleach exactly one year later, when he was no longer in office.

One year ago today, President Donald Trump took to the White House briefing room and encouraged his top health officials to study the injection of bleach into the human body as a means of fighting Covid. It was a watershed moment, soon to become iconic in the annals of presidential briefings. It arguably changed the course of political history.

Some ex-Trump aides say they don’t even think about that day as the wildest they experienced — with the conceit that there were simply too many others. But for those there, it was instantly shocking, even by Trump standards. It quickly came to symbolize the chaotic essence of his presidency and his handling of the pandemic. Twelve months later, with the pandemic still lingering and a U.S. death toll nearing 570,000, it still does.

“For me, it was the craziest and most surreal moment I had ever witnessed in a presidential press conference,” said ABC’s chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl, who was the first reporter at the briefing to question Trump’s musings about bleach.

For weeks, Trump had been giving winding, stream-of-consciousness updates on the state of the Covid fight as it clearly worsened. So when he got up from the Oval Office to brief reporters gathered in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on April 23, there was no expectation that the day’s proceedings would be any different than usual.

Privately, however, some of his aides were worried. The Covid task force had met earlier that day — as usual, without Trump — to discuss the most recent findings, including the effects of light and humidity on how the virus spreads. Trump was briefed by a small group of aides. But it was clear to some aides that he hadn’t processed all the details before he left to speak to the press.

“A few of us actually tried to stop it in the West Wing hallway,” said one former senior Trump White House official. “I actually argued that President Trump wouldn’t have the time to absorb it and understand it. But I lost, and it went how it did.”

Trump started his press conference that day by doing something he’d come to loathe: pushing basic public safety measures. He called for the “voluntary use of face coverings” and said of his administration, “continued diligence is an essential part of our strategy.”

Quickly, however, came a hint at how loose the guardrails were that day. Trump introduced Bill Bryan, head of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security. “He’s going to be talking about how the virus reacts in sunlight,” the president said. “Wait ‘til you hear the numbers.”

As Bryan spoke, charts were displayed behind him about surface temperatures and virus half-lives. He preached, rather presciently, for people to “move activities outside” and then detailed ongoing studies involving disinfectants. “We tested bleach,” he said at one point. “I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes.”

Standing off to the side, Trump clasped his hands in front of his stomach, nodded and looked out into the room of gathered reporters. When Bryan was done, he strode slowly back to the lectern.

“A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world,” Trump began, clearly thinking the question himself, “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too. It sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it 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. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump’s former coronavirus response coordinator, sat silently off to the side as the president made these suggestions to her. Later, she would tell ABC, “I didn’t know how to handle that episode,” adding, “I still think about it every day.”

Inside the Biden campaign, aides were shocked as well. They were working remotely at that juncture, communicating largely over Signal. But the import of what had happened became quickly evident to them.

“Even for him,” said one former Biden campaign aide, “this was stratospherically insane and dangerous. It cemented the case we had been making about his derelict covid response.”

In short order, the infamous bleach press conference became a literal rallying cry for Trump’s opponents, with Biden supporters dotting their yards with “He Won’t Put Bleach In You” signs. For Trump, it was a scourge. He would go on to insist that he was merely being sarcastic — a claim at odds with the excited curiosity he had posing those questions to Birx. His former team concedes that real damage was done.

“People joked about it inside the White House like, ‘Are you drinking bleach and injecting sunlight?’ People were mocking it and saying, ‘Oh let me go stand out in the sun, and I’ll be safe from Covid,” said one former administration official. “It honestly hurt. It was a credibility issue. … It was hurting us even from an international standpoint, the credibility at the White House.”

That Trump was even at the lectern that day was head-scratching for many. For weeks, he and his team had downplayed the severity of the Covid crisis even as the president privately acknowledged to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward that it had the potential to be catastrophic. But as it became clearer that the public was not buying the rosy assessments, Trump had decided to take his fate into his own hands — assembling the press on a daily basis to spin his way through the crisis.

He loved it. The former administration official said Trump was elated with the free airtime he was getting on television day after day. “He was asking how much money that was worth,” the aide recalled. The coverage was so ubiquitous that, at one point, Fox News’ Bret Baier attended the briefing and peppered the president with questions because his own show was being routinely interrupted.

The bleach episode changed all that.

Aides immediately understood what a public health quagmire Trump’s remarks had created. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted he was being taken out of context.

“President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterday’s briefing,” McEnany said in a statement issued the next day. “Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines.”

His aides realized that it was not a good strategy for him to present medical advice to the public, but Trump loved the attention.

Categories Accountability, Health, Science, Trump

Steve Ruis: How Many People Died of COVID Because They Took Trump’s Advice?

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2024 //
44

Steve Ruis has been wondering how many people died of COVID because they followed Trump’s advice? Early on in the pandemic, as people’s fears were high, Trump suggested two treatments to ward off the deadly virus: injecting yourself with bleach or taking a drug called hydroxychloroquine, which usually prescribed for malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

He found a recent scientific study that estimated the number of people who took hydroxychloroquine and died, in five countries. Were they following Trump’s advice? Very likely. How would they have learned about this drug if he had not touted it?

We don’t know yet how many people injected bleach.

Ruis notes that Trump got the best medical treatment when he had COVID. It did not include bleach or hydroxychloroquine.

Categories Elections, Health, Hoax, Research, Science, Stupid, Trump
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