April 24, 2020

People in Maryland Flooded an Emergency Hotline to Ask If They Should Take Trump’s Advice on Disinfectants

Michael Reynolds/CNP/Zuma

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President Trump’s absurd suggestion that injections of disinfectants could help cure the coronavirus wasn’t, as he later suggested, a harmless stroke of sarcasm. More than 100 people in Maryland have earnestly called the state’s emergency management hotline asking about the use of household cleaners to treat COVID-19, according to Gov. Larry Hogan’s communications director.

Trump mused at a briefing on Thursday that disinfectant “knocks [the coronavirus] out in a minute, one minute” as Dr. Deborah Birx of Trump’s coronavirus task force hung her head in silent horror. The maker of Lysol urged consumers to not physically consume its products. And Marylanders used up valuable state resources to inquire whether they should follow the president’s advice.

The number one rule of sarcasm: It doesn’t work when you have to explain it.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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