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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Injecting bleach is actually a valid treatment. I’ve had it done to me it works. For specifically a viral infection in my eye.

And granted I didn’t actually use bleach but betadine a strong disinfectant used to clean things after surgery. I can’t even remember if Trump said bleach or just disinfectant.

Nasal spray disinfectants I believe have strong studies on them for fighting COVID.

And you can buy it at wal-mart to throat gargle.

The whole bleach thing was a leftist conspiracy that rightists believes it. But there’s also similar medical usages to kill viruses.

Here’s Trumps actual comment

He continued.

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in 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’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."

All of which is a scientifically studied with positive results COVID treatment (inhaling nasal disinfectants)

Ah, you're right. My mistake.

Speaking of tech company censorship: Youtube deleted a video from pharmaceutical company Aytu Bioscience about a proposed technology for using UV light inside the lungs, which they released a press-release about a few days before Trump's comments and was developed by researchers at Cedars-Sinai who had been working on it since 2016. Their Twitter account was also suspended for a little while. (I wonder if there was any internal discussion about that the Twitter Files journalists could look up?) Given the timing it seems very likely it was what Trump's comment was referring to (or at least the part of the comment mentioning light), it was probably mentioned to him in one of his regular coronavirus meetings. Youtube deleted the video because a New York Times reporter reported it to them:

I contacted YouTube about this video, which is being shared on tons of replies on Twitter & on Facebook, by people asserting that it backs up Trump's idea throwing it out there that UV rays kill coronavirus. YouTube just said it removed it for violating its community guidelines.

He also wrote a NYT article about it in which he talked to a Youtube spokesperson, which confirms the removal was intentional rather than purely automated. You'd think that if nothing else Youtube would have sufficient double-standards favoring credible institutions to not censor pharmaceutical companies talking about research they're involved with in cooperation with Cedars-Sinai, but apparently not.

That does not sound like an injection. It sounds like external application, as I have had done when I have had eye infections (albeit bacterial, not viral, so it was an antibiotic, not iodine). And that is the point: There are all sorts of substances which are beneficial when used externally, but harmful when used internally. Even the nasal spray study you link to below appears not be meant to be inhaled but rather to be applied to the lining of the nose. The actual study makes that clear: The goal is to develop something to "reduce[] nasal shedding", and they tested the effectiveness by using nasal swabs "collected at 5, 15, and 60 minutes post-dose to assess immediate and residual impact of treatment."

Yeah, it does seem that the treatment is to bathe the eye in iodine, rather than to inject it ["It is already used perioperatively as standard of ophthalmic care"].

My main point is there are treatments quite similar to injecting bleach. Eye baths because your eyes are an organ and not like your skin. Nasal sprays because that’s an internal treatment and diluted enough can kill viruses without threatening internal processes. Chemo therapy is even closer to injected something bad to kill bad and good.

Blueanon running with he said we should literally drink bleach probably did hurt the sale and development of betadine nasal sprays which probably costs more lives than a few people dying from drinking bleach. Because the product was too close to his comments and Trump of course could never be right.

And my point is that the treatment is NOT even remotely similar to injecting bleach. You are talking about localized treatments on the surface of the body -- the nasal sprays in question were applied to the nasal epithelium, were they not? And the eye baths are just that: Baths; the eye is immersed in fluid which surrounds the surface of the eye. There are, of course, [treatments that inject medicine into the eye}(https://www.aao.org/eye-health/treatments/eye-injections), but those appear to be antibiotics, not antiseptics, and even in those, AFAIK the medicine is confined to the eye, unlike injections that address infections, which are distributed throughout the body. And it is the "throughout the body" part that makes injecting bleach hazardous, is it not?

PS: I don't know whether Trump was right or wrong; for all I know, it is possible to develop some sort of injectable antiseptic. I am just saying that your example is not evidence one way or the other.

Going to be honest I just disagree. These uses seem similar though not identical to injection. Even moreso nasal sprays because your definitely digesting some of the substance.

I guess I simply don't understand that the fact that users might accidentally inhale a chemical that is not meant to be inhaled says anything about the viability of designing that or any other substance to be intentionally inhaled or injected. It seems completely irrelevant.

Isn’t a nasal spray intentionally inhaling the product? The nasal cavity itself I consider to be an internal part of the body. And breathing happens. Eye baths are literal organs being disinfected and not just cleaning your skin which is designed as an exterior protective shield.

No,the treatment you linked to is clearly not inhaled. It is meant to eliminate COVID viruses in the nostrils, not in the lungs.

So you don’t breath thru your nose? This is getting pedantic but your insides are going to be exposed to the product by injecting it into your nose.

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Yea it’s the same thing as the very fine people quote. Where he never said KKK were the fine people but the left decided to say he did and promoted it everywhere.

It reminds me of the MTG quote about the Rothschilds boiling down in popular culture to "Jewish space lasers," and now I get ads on Facebook for army patches for the "Jewish space laser corps."

Holy shit, I had no idea that wasn't what she'd actually said. I assumed it wasn't quite a direct quote, but a distillation of something she'd said, rather than a deliberate fabrication from a media snake looking for a dunk. MTG's actual post is (from my perspective) pretty kooky, but this doesn't justify the willful distortions. Jonathan Chait, the weasel that got that ball rolling, explains thusly:

To be clear, the story, which I wrote, did not say she used the words “Jewish space laser.” It accurately reproduced her entire post blaming the Rothschilds, and I noted that “the Rothschild family has featured heavily in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since at least the 19th century.”

The story in which Chait definitely didn't say that she used the words "Jewish space laser" is titled "GOP Congresswoman Blamed Wildfires on Secret Jewish Space Laser". Every time that I think I have adjusted my views of journalists to be sufficiently low, I find out that I need to turn that mental ratchet once more.

Having just read the post, "GOP congresswoman blamed wildfires on secret jewish space laser" is... not a bad description. What's the willful distortion you're seeing here?

I had no idea that the same post was speculating on possible corruption as well.

It's almost as if reframing it in maximally silly terms will allow the non-kooky bits to be ignored.

I would consider an accurate and neutral single-sentence framing of MTG's post to be "MTG speculates that wildfires may be caused by industrial mistake with space-based solar power". The use of "laser" implies to almost any reader that this is an intentional, aimed weapon; MTG speculates that such a beam could look like a laser, not there is a weapon being used. There is no suggestion in her post that said "laser" is "Jewish" in anyway. I would consider describing her speculation as being a "secret Jewish space laser" to basically just be dishonest dunking.

"MTG speculates that wildfires may be caused by industrial mistake with space-based solar power".

I loathe journalists, and MTG is at least putatively on my side. Her post is written in the profoundly annoying "just asking questions" style which adds a degree of ambiguity, but I don't think your summation is accurate. She claims that connected officials gain fiscal advantage from the wildfires, and have implemented policy to maximize this advantage: the areas under threat from wildfires are the same areas where the high-speed rail project is planned to go through, and the same officials are investing in the power company supposedly causing the fires, the rail project the fires are enabling, while passing legislation to protect the power company from adverse consequences of the fire. The implication I'm reading is that they're setting the fires on purpose, not a mistake.

MTG herself uses the term "laser or beam of light" twice, making the claim that it's reasonable to attribute the fires to such space-based beams.

Does the industry in question even exist? Obviously the company is a thing, but do they actually have emitters or a ground station operating? Much less a setup scaled sufficiently to deliver significant power?

Having just read the post, "GOP congresswoman blamed wildfires on secret jewish space laser" is... not a bad description. What's the willful distortion you're seeing here?

Yes, it is a distortion, here is link to her original post.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marjorie-taylor-greene-qanon-wildfires-space-laser-rothschild-execute.html

It is not "secret Jewish space laser", but "secret Rotschild space solar power microwave transmission"

Do not blame her, we are all science fiction nerds, we would love to live in world where launch costs were low enough to make this possible.

On the other hand, rather not - imagine how high would energy prices have to be to make this pay, or imagine the power of aerospace lobby to push for this bondoogle anyway.

Maybe MTG is visitor from another timeline, either utopian or dystopian compared to ours? This would explain many things.

SpaceX has plenty of military contracts with secret payloads. There are also plenty of military installations in California.

Beamed energy would be great for military logistics. Especially for the remote outposts in Afghanistan that we were still maintaining at the time of MTG's post.

Blue light is most probably a transformer frying or power lines arcing, but maybe not.

MTG's thesis is that a well-connected energy company is beaming energy down from space, and that these beams are being used to intentionally start wildfires, apparently to clear the way for the high-speed rail project.

"Secret": She implies a secret plan to use the collectors to set wildfires, and also implies that the company may have more satellites in space than is publicly known.

"Jewish": The Rotchschilds connection, natch.

"Space Lasers": the solar emitters are putatively in space, and she mentions eyewitness accounts of "lasers or blue beams of light", and then suggests that the solar emitter beam might resemble a laser or beam of light.

"Secret Jewish Space Lasers" is not a maximally-charitable interpretation of her claim, but it's certainly defensible. I do not think it can be fairly argued that the journalists in question are twisting her words. She really did claim that possibly-secret space-based satelites were being used by democrats and the Rothschild corporation to start wildfires with concentrated energy beams.

The whole bleach thing was a leftist conspiracy that rightists believes it. But there’s also similar medical usages to kill viruses.

Using bleach as universal cure is way older than Trump presidency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement

(Yes, know all problems with rational wiki, but it is good resource for all kinds of alternative medicine and miracle treatments. Consulting RW before you decide to use ancient native cure instead of soulless Western medicine might save your wallet and your life)

Whether bleach use increased during coronavirus panic in response to Donald's unfortunate utterances, is disputed.

https://reason.com/2020/04/28/the-myth-of-the-bleach-drinking-masses/

Why are you trying to lump him in with quacks, when he literally linked a mainstream optometry journal?

Injecting bleach is actually a valid treatment. I’ve had it done to me it works. For specifically a viral infection in my eye.

I, and I think many other people want more information about this.

Notice how the following paragraph I mention using betadine and not bleach (and Trump never said bleach but a disinfectant).

And yes this treatment was painful. But I also had a nasty eye virus and was unable to look at light for weeks before this treatment. It’s not the least bit enjoyable to apply a strong disinfectant directly to your eye.

https://www.reviewofoptometry.com/article/whats-the-buzz-about-betadine

And it was studied as a nasal spray for covid https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/Article/2022/February/Study-finds-nasal-spray-could-aid-battle-against-COVID

Again trump said disinfectant and bleach was blueanon. Drinking disinfectant probably wouldn’t work but it is used to reduce viral load when the virus is in the eyes, ears, throats.