{"id":11326,"date":"2020-04-23T14:27:53","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T14:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/?page_id=11326"},"modified":"2022-02-23T20:38:36","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T20:38:36","slug":"04-23","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/04-23\/","title":{"rendered":"04-23"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Thursday, April 23<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUS Cases 887,956
US Deaths 52,642<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Apr 23: At the daily Coronavirus Task Force Press Briefing<\/a>,<\/span> President Trump discusses injecting disinfectants into the body (The next day he says he was being sarcastic. He doesn’t seem sarcastic in the video). Another 4.4 million Americans file<\/a> <\/span>for jobless benefits in the last week.*<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tFrom the Cutting Room Floor...\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Americans have been consuming a lot of electronic media in quarantine. Netflix has seen a surge of 16 million new accounts.[1] Video games lucratively supplement watching Netflix. Nintendo\u2019s Animal Crossing<\/i>, for instance, is all the rage. As Imad Khan at the New York Times<\/em> has noted, Animal Crossing<\/i> offers a paradise in the midst of this waiting and fear and chaos… a place where money falls from trees, “and a talking racoon can approve you for a mortgage.”[2]<\/span><\/p>\n

[read_more id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of these entertainment products are advertisement-supported. And the ads are already getting tiresome. Brands keep trotting out \u201cwe\u2019re going to get through this\u201d and \u201cbetter together\u201d and \u201cin these challenging times\u201d to sell everything from pick-up trucks to cheese puffs. Every ad bleeds fake inspiration and sentimentality or reminds us to stay home, as if we had a choice. I\u2019ve even seen Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes used to hawk dress shirts and ties. People are, understandably, sick of it already.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if there\u2019s any lasting narrative to be pulled out of this period of over a month now in quarantine, it could be just how awash we are with disinformation. The schmaltzy advertisements are one thing. When the disinformation comes from the President of the United States, it\u2019s another. During the CTF press briefing today, the Commander-in-Chief over the entire military, nuclear weapons, etc., said the following:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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President<\/b>: So I asked Bill [Bryan, acting undersecretary of the Science & Technology Directorate at DHS] a question that probably some of you are thinking of\u2026. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous\u2014whether it\u2019s ultraviolet or just very powerful light\u2026. 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\u2019re going to test that too\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Bryan<\/b>: We\u2019ll get to the right folks who could\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

President<\/b>: \u2014Right, 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. So, that, you\u2019re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds\u2014it sounds interesting to me.[3]<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

If you listen closely enough, you might hear a slapping noise when the national health care establishment collectively facepalms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, this <\/span>stupifying “bleach speech”<\/span> <\/span>moment also offers an opportunity to understand Trump\u2019s populist appeal as it coincides with his known germophobia and recurring concern with the purification of the body.<\/span><\/p>\n

As political scholar Elesa Zehndorfer has noted, 80% of American voters are consistently partisan in their political loyalties: roughly 98% of the time, you can predict the partisan affiliation of a voter by examining how they view non-political, emotion-invoking images.[4]<\/span><\/a> In other words, a good portion of American voters are culturally, emotionally, even viscerally invested in their chosen political party. They are so connected that they will forgive serious ethical and intellectual errors in their party leaders. Even when they are shown irrefutable proof and bound to the data \u201cby cognitive handcuffs,\u201d they manage, Houdini-like to free themselves from making rational conclusions that would threaten their emotional connection to their party.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

And why would Trump say such and obviously strange and potentially dangerous thing from the podium? There are biographical explanations. He is a self-professed germophobe who prefers drinking water through straws and has struggled to get over his aversion to shaking hands. He is \u201cparticularly sensitive to bodily stimuli that evokes disgust,\u201d which is also a trait that has been associated with conservatives and evangelicals who are concerned with the \u201cright and proper\u201d use of the body. As one scholar has noted, \u201cconservatives are more likely than liberals to experience disgust in response to specific behaviors that violate ideals of purity.\u201d[5]<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Here, today, we have a germophobe narcissist who lacks the ability to control his speech, ruminating on the comforting idea of purifying the body through the ingestion of bleach to a population that is emotionally predisposed to believe him, despite the fact that drinking bleach is fatal. The suggestion of the bleach and the infrared light is initially shocking, but it actually fits a pattern that we have seen repeatedly.<\/span><\/p>


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Notes<\/span>
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[1]<\/span><\/a> \u201cNetflix Gets 16 Million New Sign-Ups Thanks to Lockdown.\u201d <\/span>BBC News<\/i>, April 21, 2020, sec. Business. <\/span>https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/business-52376022<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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[2] Khan, Imad. \u201cWhy Animal Crossing Is the Game for the Coronavirus Moment.\u201d <\/span>The New York Times<\/i>, April 7, 2020, sec. Arts. <\/span>https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/04\/07\/arts\/animal-crossing-covid-coronavirus-popularity-millennials.html<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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[3] The White House, \u201cRemarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing,\u201d The White House, April 23, 2020, https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefings-statements\/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-31\/.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]<\/span><\/a> Elesa Zehndorfer, Evolution, Politics and Charisma: Why Do Populists Win?<\/i> (Routledge, 2019).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]<\/span><\/a> Yoel Inbar et al., \u201cDisgust Sensitivity Predicts Intuitive Disapproval of Gays,\u201d Emotion<\/i> 9, no. 3 (2009): 435\u201339, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/a0015960.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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jrsherrod (username). \u201cCOVID-19 US Timeline: Trump\u2019s Narrative alongside Cases and Deaths by County [Updated][OC]\u202f: Dataisbeautiful.\u201d reddit, April 23, 2020. https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/dataisbeautiful\/comments\/g6rdh0\/covid19_us_timeline_trumps_narrative_alongside\/<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tVideos\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The “Bleach Speech”<\/center><\/strong>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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NBC New York. President Trump Suggests \u2018Injecting\u2019 Disinfectant as Coronavirus Cure | NBC New York<\/i>, 2020. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zicGxU5MfwE<\/a>.<\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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MSNBC. Use Of Drug Boosted By Trump, Fox News Not Borne Out By Science | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC<\/i>, 2020. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=220ksmTROtk<\/a>.<\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Every COVID Commercial is Exactly the Same<\/strong>. Watch below.<\/center>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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