If you spent any time on the internet on Thursday and Friday, or read a hard copy of a newspaper, you would undoubtedly have read stories or social media posts saying that President Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach or Lysol to cure coronavirus. Of course, that's not true. The media were either stupid or malicious when they misreported Trump's words. What Trump said was straightforward and thoughtful:

“And then I saw the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way we could do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning,” the president said during his White House press briefing. “As you see it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

The American media, however, collapsed in paroxysms of laughter. That stupid Donald Trump. He’s telling people to drink Lysol. Speaking of those same media folks, Ben Rhodes, who was “Obama’s foreign-policy guru,” had this to say:

“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

Monica Showalter, who knows a great deal, explained in her post that ignoramuses have always laughed at visionaries. In this case, though, Trump wasn’t just a visionary. What he theorized has already been happening.

One of the available treatments for cancer is Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation Therapy. Ultraviolet light has long been understood to be a disinfectant that destroys nucleic acids and disrupts DNA. The sun’s ultraviolet light is why it’s one of the most effective ways to destroy the COVID-19 virus when it’s on objects or aerosolized. The question is whether that same ultraviolet energy can be used inside the human body. Apparently, it can:

Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation, also called Photoluminescence Therapy, is intravenously applied ultraviolet energy. Due to its profound photochemical, biochemical and physiological effects it has been of great value in a wide variety of diseases according to over 100 years of research findings.

Niels Ryberg Finsen is considered the father of Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation. In the late 1890s, he treated various skin conditions with Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation and he and his successors reported a success rate of about 98% in curing lupus vulgaris, a tuberculosis-like disease of the skin and mucous membranes. In 1903, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research in photochemotherapy.

In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, E. K. Knott, M.D. in Seattle, Washington, and other physicians applied this treatment successfully to a variety of other conditions, such as bacterial diseases, viral infections including acute and chronic hepatitis, poliomyelitis, encephalitis, overwhelming toxemias, rheumatoid arthritis and many other diseases and conditions.

In Europe, since the early 1950s, Josef M. Issels, M.D. administered Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation, or Photoluminescence Therapy, as an important component of his treatment program to thousands of his patients suffering from cancer and various immune disorders.

Likewise, since 1989, people have been using hydrogen peroxide intravenously to kill bacteria and viruses:

In IV H2O2 therapy, Hydrogen peroxide is infused into the circulatory system through a vein in the arm. It drips in over a ninety-minute period. Five cc of pharmaceutical-grade, three-percent hydrogen peroxide are put in 500 cc five percent glucose in water as a carrier solution. Two grams of magnesium chloride are added along with a small amount of manganese to prevent vein sclerosis.

In the blood, it encounters two enzymes: catalase and cytochrome-C. Catalase drives the above reaction to completion immediately. That part of the hydrogen peroxide that binds with cytochrome-C, however, is not allowed to become water and singlet oxygen for a period of forty minutes. After forty minutes of being bound to cytochrome-C this enzyme begins to act like catalase and breaks down the hydrogen peroxide to water and singlet oxygen. By this time, the hydrogen peroxide/cytochrome-C complex has been spread throughout the body. In this way the benefits of hydrogen peroxide are made available to all cells.

The effect of singlet oxygen in the human body is twofold. It kills, or severely inhibits the growth of, anaerobic organisms (bacteria and viruses that use carbon dioxide for fuel and leave oxygen as a by-product). This action is immediate, on contact with the anaerobic organism. Anaerobic bacteria are pathogens, the organisms which cause disease. All viruses are anaerobic.

I am not advocating either of these therapies, for I know nothing about them other than what I quoted above. Indeed, there is evidence that the hydrogen peroxide therapy can be quite dangerous – although all medical treatments can be harmful if abused.

My point is simply that, not only was Trump making an intelligent suggestion about new ways to treat a new enemy, what he was advocating has already been done! In the battle between Trump and the media, they may sell pixels by the barrel, but it’s Trump who has the brains and knowledge.