Saturday, April 25, 2020

Media Claims Calls To Poison Control Have Increased Due To Trump’s ‘Disinfectant’ Comments. That’s Not True.


. . . "For example, the New York Daily News reported there was an unusually high number of New Yorkers contacted city health authorities over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners in the 18 hours that followed President Trump’s bogus claim that injecting such products could cure coronavirus.”
"As Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown reported, however, that was not the case.
"“[T]he article makes no mention of anyone deliberately consuming household cleaners. It simply states that 30 people called the city’s poison control hotline ‘over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners,’” Nolan Brown reported. “Fearing that you ingested something doesn’t jibe with having intentionally consumed that substance.”
"Further, the Daily News reporters compare the number of calls this year to those during the same period last year – when people weren’t using household cleaners as stringently as they are now and thus not risking as much exposure.
"“[O]ne needn’t do a detailed analysis to surmise why exposure to things like Lysol and bleach—and fears about this exposure—might be up this month over April 2019. And one needn’t reach for the ridiculous explanation that it’s because people deliberately consumed it en masse after listening to Trump." . . .

It could have been just people trying to reach Jerry Seinfeld

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