Doctors and nurses are risking their lives and dying. People are out of work and struggling to make rent. The president of the United States is suggesting injecting disinfectant.

 

Doctors were quick to issue warnings. Isopropyl alcohol can shut down the central nervous system. Ingesting bleach can burn the esophagus, and is already a leading cause of household poisonings in the U.S., at 45,000 cases a year. Bleach is recommended for cleaning surfaces precisely because it so effectively destroys organic matter—which includes human tissue. Even administration officials pushed back; the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn, told CNN, “I certainly wouldn’t recommend the internal ingestion of a disinfectant.”