On Friday The White House accused the media of taking President Trump’s comments “out of context,” when he asked the doctors at the Coronavirus Task Force press conference, if disinfectants could be injected directly into the body to combat the disease.
“President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterday’s briefing,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement. “Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines.”
But he did ask if it was possible and seemed to imply people should check with their doctors about the potential for this. Here’s what he said:
“Question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it,” Trump said, looking over to Bryan.
“And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re gonna test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?”
He continued: “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, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number, so it will be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors. But it sounds, 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, that’s pretty powerful.”
Trump was hammered on social media and in the papers, and he deserved it. He has a horrible grasp on medicine, which is nothing to be embarrassed about. Just keep the idiotic treatment suggestions to private conversations.
Do you think President Trump meant to recommend injecting disinfectant with bleech or did the media misrepresent him again? Reply to this email and let us know!
Our Political Parties are like “Mean Girls”
According to UrbanDictionary.com, mean girls are 1) Girls who are bullies and use “girl aggression” (nasty comments, trickery, deceit, excluding people from events, spreading rumors, stealing boyfriends,etc.) to manipulate other girls.
The Democratic state representative from Detroit who publicly lauded Trump for pushing hydroxychloroquine after it saved her life, including making a visit to the White House, is now essentially being kicked out of her party. The Detroit News reported the following:
Detroit Democrats plan to vote to censure and bar any future endorsements of a Democratic lawmaker who credited President Donald Trump with advocating for the drug that she said cured her of COVID-19. State Rep. Karen Whitsett, D-Detroit, broke protocol by meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence during an April 14 meeting of COVID-19 survivors, during which she credited hydroxychloroquine for saving her life.
“Thank you for everything that you have done,” Whitsett told Trump at the meeting. “I did not know that saying thank you had a political line. … I’m telling my story and my truth, and this how I feel and these are my words.”The meeting and other comments Whitsett made prior to and during the coronavirus pandemic have landed her in hot water with the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Organization. The group, as first reported by Gongwer News Service, plans to vote Saturday via Zoom on a resolution to censure Whitsett, a first-term lawmaker representing the 9th Michigan House District.
The admonition means she will not get the group’s endorsement for this year nor will she be able to engage in the group’s activities for the next two election cycles. Whitsett wasn’t trying to be political. She believes that Trump’s advocacy for this drug safed her life and she just wanted to say thank you. There are some damn “Mean Girls” in Democratic party politics.
Pharma
On March 16, Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA) and the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID) began dosing patients with mRNA-1273, its potenital vaccine against COVID-19. That was phase 1, and the second round of dosing in healthy Seattle volunteers has now begun.
Without acting like this is the answer, moving to phase 2 is a good sign, suggesting that the trial is progressing well and there are no obvious bad side effects from the first round.
People from Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, who is heading the study, told USA Today that the physicians at Kaiser Permanente’s Vaccine Treatment and Evaluation Unit in Seattle don’t have results from the first round. This suggests that the study data is blinded, meaning it will not be released until a specific point in the trial.
The mRNA vaccine is a new type of technology, where the vaccine contains a section of messenger RNA that codes for a protein associated with the virus. The vaccine is injected into a person and the mRNA moves into the test subject’s cells, where the cells then churn out the protein. The body’s immune system should then treat the protein like the virus and attack it, developing an immune response that it will then use if it comes into contact with the actual virus. A more traditional vaccine uses either a dead or weakened form of the virus or proteins from the virus.
MRNA’s stock was up ovr 6% on Firday and the stock is up over 61% since May 13th. We think the risk is to the downside now on this stock. The market is pricing n a win on this vaccine and it’s too early to tell. A pullback is a good time to buy this name.
More shocks for Crude Oil?
Saudi Arabia may be forced to reroute tankers carrying some 40 million barrels of crude oil to the United States if President Trump goes through with a threat to ban imports, Reuters has reported, citing shipping data and unnamed sources.
There have been reports that Washington is discussing a ban on Saudi imports of crude oil or impose tariffs to stem the decline in U.S. oil prices. When President Trump first floated the idea of oil import tariffs, it was taken as a threat to large oil exporters to the U.S. such as Saudi Arabia to finally reach an output cut agreement with their partners in OPEC+. Now, the stakes are higher.
According to Reuters’ sources, Saudi Arabia had first tried to seek storage options for the oil now at sea. Many tanker owners, however, were unwilling to agree to such a change in plans as it would have meant stranding tankers, with the prospects of finding a buyer slim to none
Aramco “offers its larger customers with refineries in multiple regions of the world optionality to take their crude purchases from Aramco into the region,” the company told Reuters in a statement. “Changes in ship destinations are routine in the course of our business, particularly in a company of our scale.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that at least one in every ten Very Large Crude Carriers capable of holding up to 2 million barrels of oil is now serving as floating storage, with many of them full of unsold Saudi oil.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the volume of Saudi crude already on its way to the United States was seven times higher than the typical monthly intake of Saudi oil in 2019. These vessels, however, were loaded before OPEC+ struck the deal to cut 9.7 million bpd from its collective output beginning in May.
A Bet For Someone Who’s Head is Filled With Rocks
A man who bet big in a best-of-three game of rock, paper, scissors has been saved from his debts by the Quebec Court of Appeal.
Edmund Mark Hooper owed $517,000 (£296,000) after losing to Michel Primeau in January 2011 and was forced to remortgage his home to meet the costs, but the court has now written off his debts.
According to Quebec law, any contract for a bet requires the wager to be based on an activity “requiring only skill or bodily exertion on the part of the parties” and not simply chance.
Furthermore, the bet must not be for an excessive amount.
So, the court of appeal had to decide whether rock paper scissors was a game of luck or skill.
The original 2017 judgement by Justice Chantal Chatelain ruled that rock paper scissors could ”in certain precise circumstances, call upon the skill of the parties, particularly in the speed of execution, the sense of observation or the putting in place of a strategic sequence”.
But Justice Chatelain ruled that the size of the bet was too excessive, finding the contract was therefore invalid.
The Court of Appeal has upheld this decision. They’re also expected to take up the case as to whether or not these two are idiots.