Thursday night, after a completely farcical coronavirus press briefing from President Donald Trump, the White House put out a transcript of the event that falsely showed Dr. Deborah Birx supporting one of his ridiculous ideas. By Friday morning, the White House was forced to issue a correction of its transcript showing that, in fact, the coronavirus response coordinator had shot down the president.
During the briefing, Trump and others discussed new research about the effects of sunlight and disinfectants on the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 on surfaces in the environment. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, Trump pushed truly bizarre and reckless claims about the disinfectants. And while not as obviously dangerous, he also raised the naive idea that because sunlight can kill the virus in the environment, he thought it could be used as a treatment.
“Deborah, have you ever heard of that?” Trump said, turning to the doctor sitting against the wall in the briefing room. “The heat and the light, relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?” Continue reading.