Americans losing faith in what Trump says about the coronavirus: Reuters/Ipsos

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/americans-losing-faith-in-what-trump-says-about-the-coronavirus-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKCN22A3CK

by throwaway888abc • 6 years ago

34 28 6 years ago

reuters.com

debian3• 6 years ago

“And 98% of Americans said they would not try to inject themselves with bleach or other disinfectants if they got the coronavirus, including 98% of Democrats and 98% of Republicans. That is a near-unanimous rejection of an idea that Trump floated at a time of widespread anxiety about the virus.”

Why is that 2% haven’t been eliminated by evolution.

krallja• 6 years ago

One problem with polling is that people answer contrary to their own actual beliefs. They didn’t hear the question right, or they misspoke and are too embarrassed to correct it, or they’re trolling the pollster.

Gibbon1• 6 years ago

Yeah it's like the false positives that plague attempts to measure rates of covid19. If you ask about briefs vs boxers the errors cancel. Run with scissors yay or nay, it doesn't.

mindslight• 6 years ago

It's worth pointing out that it is this article itself that is equating "injecting bleach" with "idea that Trump floated". He did not actually say to inject bleach. So did the 2% hear the question wrong, answer on expected party lines, would approve of a doctor doing it, partisan trolling, or who knows?

FWIW I think what Trump actually did say demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of basic physical knowledge and common sense, typical of empty headed business types. And while another mentally incompetent person could take his words as inspiration to inject themselves with disinfectants, he didn't literally promote this. It doesn't serve truth to exaggerate that he did.

(The terrifying thought is that this kerfuffle was actually a product of him trying to operate in an open minded brainstorming mode. It's not actually a result of him acting stupidly, but rather a product of him trying to be the smartest he can be)

downshun• 6 years ago

eliminated by evolution

You mean natural selection, and it doesn't select towards perfection

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_32

Great news: it means you're part of the select 2% by some other measure! Good job.

yellowapple• 6 years ago

What's interesting to me is that a whole 2% of Democrats are willing to inject themselves with household cleaners, too. I.E. that the number of people who think "this just might work!" is consistent across party lines.

selimthegrim• 6 years ago

These are probably somewhere holed up with the mysterious black David Duke supporters in polls.

eutropia• 6 years ago

If extrapolated literally, 6.6 million US citizens think it's not a terrible idea to inject bleach to fight coronavirus.

Explains the more than doubling of poison control center calls after those reckless comments..

forgot_my_pwd3• 6 years ago

No one was saying to inject bleach. And Trump was probably just crudely restating some experimental treatment he had heard about in one of his many briefings. Speculative disinfectant treatments have been mentioned.

It's a very minor issue and clearly grasping for a smear by the President's opponents.

Anyone who tried to drink bleach because of Trump's offhand comments that in no way endorsed doing so is beyond help or hope.

EdwardDiego2• 6 years ago

True, he merely suggested it _could_ be injected.

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're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds—it sounds interesting to me.

But getting hung up on whether he gave a direct imperative to inject bleach, or merely floated it as something that could be worthwhile is a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.

It doesn't help that the Venn diagram of people who were already self-medicating (or worse, medicating their children) with bleach and people who support Trump probably has a significant intersection.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/health/drinking-bleach-au...

_bxg1• 6 years ago

Maybe it was an offhand remark, maybe it was sarcasm, etc. But that misses the point.

If you are the most powerful and widely-heard person in the United States, you don't get to improvise your press briefings or give dubious advice "as a joke". People often defend him with "well we've all said something stupid", or "maybe he just didn't think it all the way through". But he isn't you or me. He is the leader of the free world. He carries enormous responsibility, and he's demonstrated time and again that he can't be bothered to give a flying fart about it.

Gollapalli2• 6 years ago

If there were some sort of non-harmful disinfectant that could be aerosolized and didn't permanently damage lung tissue it probably would actually be quite useful (not a doctor, don't spray aerosolized lysol into your lungs).

x1798DE• 6 years ago

Interestingly, Scott Alexander puts "Lizardman's constant" - the rate at which you can get people in a poll to agree to even patently absurd things like "Lizardmen control the Earth" - at 4%: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

So in a sense 98% seems suspiciously high for poll responses even assuming that the true rate of bleach-drinkers is something like 0.0001%.

adelHBN• 6 years ago

How is this news?

ericzawo• 6 years ago

I can't honestly believe how many smart, empathetic and otherwise responsible people continue to defend the man.

ars• 6 years ago

It's because he's so open about what does and thinks. He doesn't act like a typical politician and hide it.

He'll say things like "We are in Iraq for the oil".

Everyone knew that, but no president would admit it.

He's also incredibly self-centered, and he acts only in order to get re-elected, and/or praised. But that means he does what the people want, rather than what is best.

There are a lot of people who believe a politician should represent the will of the voters, rather than act in the best way they know.

Obviously you can argue which is better course of action, but at least you can understand why people vote for him.

Also: You would do well to ignore what he says, and pay attention only to what he does. He says everything and anything, just to gauge reactions. His actions are then based on what reaction he got. (Remember he's very self centered and wants praise.)

I've found that people who really hate him pay way too much attention to what he says, thinking that what he says has some bearing on what he's actually going to do.

Dylan16807• 6 years ago

The frustrating part is not that he says whatever he wants with no regard to truth or keeping promises. It's that people keep believing his words, and defending them, with no acknowledgment that he's doing so!

biolurker1• 6 years ago

The fact that 47% after all these lies and misinformation still doesn't get it hurts my brain

matttproud• 6 years ago

Put me in the bucket of Americans who lost faith in the American people.

Absolutely unconscionable.

Americans losing faith in what Trump says about the coronavirus: Reuters/Ipsos

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