Florida takes an early lead, with a Republican lawmaker suggesting we aim a hair dryer up our nose to treat COVID-10.
Florida Okeechobee County Commissioner Bryant Culpepper (R) referenced a program he said he saw on One American News Network on how to combat the coronavirus, the Lake Okeechobee News reports.
Said Culpepper: “One of the things that was pointed out in this interview with one of the foremost doctors who has studied the coronavirus said that the nasal passages and the nasal membranes are the coolest part of the body. That’s why the virus tends to go there until it then becomes healthy enough to go into the lungs.”
He added: “This sound really goofy, and it did to me too, but it works. Once the temperature reaches 136 degrees Fahrenheit, the virus falls apart, it disintegrates. I said how would you get the temperature up to 136 degrees? The answer was you use a blow dryer. You hold a blow dryer up to your face and you inhale through your nose and it kills all the viruses in your nose.”
Do I need to explain that that wouldn’t work at all, and would probably be deleterious to your sinuses?
By the way, One America News Network is a conspiracy-peddling, far right paranoid network that promotes nothing but pro-Trump bullshit. Don’t trust it.
Meh.
It’s not as bad as Hobby Lobby ordering employees to come to work because one half of the founding couple had a vision and now they’re on a mission from god to make money off of crafters during the pandemic b/c that will somehow “groom” people for Christ.
Work harder, PZ.
Our establishment leaders aren’t generous enough to say “let them eat cake.” Most seem to have moved on to the “fuck off and die” stage of grief long ago. But we’re supposed to let them rummage through our pockets one last time, so they won’t have to touch our filthy peasant corpses later.
Beats sticking a deck chair up your nose .
I can’t work harder. I’ve got too much to do and I’m falling behind.
136°F would cause significant thermal burns.
Do you think they should include a warning about not using a blow torch instead of a hair dryer ?
You never know .
Crip Dyke (#1) –
Gamestop had the temerity to call themself an “essential service”, ordering their stores to stay open. They gave their stores a form letter with a corporate phone number that probably goes to an answering machine, and said, “give that to the cops if they show up.”
Over 120F is bad for the skin. Apparently Republicans are just clueless about their own bodies. I will not go out of my way to stop the spread of this idea though.
Hair dryer, eh? I was hoping my sauna would save me.
136°F, that’s about 60°C. That’s like the minimum safe internal temperature for cooking beef/lamb. i.e. the temperature at which you can say the meat is well and safely cooked… it probably would kill the virus, but clearly they haven’t realised that their nose is made of meat…
With the response of many people to coronavirus we are well into Darwin Awards territory.
@10 I though it was gristle .
Ooh, a sauna. Had one in the basement of the last house we lived in in Dah Yoo Pee. Found it useful for both reducing back muscle pain after moving large amounts of snow, and for attenuating both the severity and duration of colds. A sauna might reduce the severity of the corona virus disease if done shortly after the initial symptoms first appear. It would be interesting if it did help.
For the OANN viewers, I recommend sticking their head in an oven turned to 400 degrees for 20 minutes to make sure the viruses are destroyed.
@Artor. Such hostility is so unseemly. Of course if it’s a gas oven you only have to blow out the pilot.
Was it inappropriate of my coworker to wish that Rand Paul’s neighbor had held of until now to break a few of his ribs?
A sauna gets up to about 80c. it’s surprising what temperature the body can handle.
However if you do it properly, you have to get naked with lots of strangers.Not sure if you Americans would like that, I’ve been to many saunas around Europe and never met an American in one.
Hair drier! What about the Second Amendment? Can we convince these guys to use a Smith & Wesson instead? (The National Lampoon used to have a parody drug ad for Terminalin, a bottle full of bullets, for cerebral infusion when euthanasia is indicated.)
I’ve heard of the stupid burning, but usually it isn’t literal.
We started locking down here in Oregon a week ago. We’re barely over 100 cases. Florida is over 500 already and they are doing nothing!?! Is it time to neuter the United States yet? Just cut the bloody thing off. Florida sinking into the ocean may be the only good thing to come out of global warming.
@7, I read that and commented to my wife about the historic governmental response to such scofflaws. Declare the structure hopelessly contaminated with the current plague and cleanse it with fire, then raze what was left.
That remains enshrined in our inherited common law…
@18, have a care! Given that Smith and Wesson makes all kinds of products, ranging from utility knives to clothing, there is a fairly decent chance that they have their brand on a frigging hair dryer.
Hmm, a geological/linguistic question, can a dryer make it drier than any of the Drayas?
Put down that wet trout!*
*Hey, it’s better than somewhere else I commented on, where we devolved into physics jokes…
@ 20
OTOH, the people would just float away in their boats, and the Everglades would be gone — with only a brief memory and a lingering oil slick to mark its passing.
I’d rather just return Texas to Mexico.
@ 22 stroppy
I’d rather just return Texas to Mexico.
You broke it; you bought it.
@ 5 chigau
136°F
Oh, right, not centigrade.
“That’s why the virus tends to go there until it then becomes healthy enough to go into the lungs.”
BTW, does anyone know howinfuck a virus becomes healthy or unhealthy?
I ran into this on Snopes.com earlier today (I was checking to verify that our incredibly responsible president actually did cross out “Corona” and replace it with a sharpied “Chinese” before spreading it further…)
I guess this is some of the results of waging a long-term war against education, expertise and intellectualism, we get dumb shit like how long you can hold your breath as a diagnostic test, and using hair driers, bananas, or drinking water for cures.
If only this wasn’t something contagious, I might be able to find some schadenfreude in all the idiocy…
Don’t you know viral capsids are self assembling? They pull themselves up by their bootstraps, like proper capitalists.
They fact that you want to get rid of these hard working new millenium job-creators is exactly what marks you as a traitor commie, commie!
Why don’t you cry to your parasite “human” friends who do nothing but consume and replicate themselves?
Coming up next: Sneezing on poor people – a great new way to shed those pounds?
@wzrd1, #25:
Viruses become healthy like the rest of us do. By buying essential oils, duh!
@Wzrd1:
The virus chelates the forsythia with an essential oils-augmented vegan day-fast plus colonic cleanse, although sometimes some homeopathic bat cell-tincture is also necessary to stimulate the virus’ immune system.
aquietvoice:
This is classic.
How much worse has the Trump administration made this issue?
A: much
B: very much
C: I’m already bleeding out my asshole
Recycled joke from the Obama years. Yes it’s referencing Ebola, and no it’s not clever but it applies now.
Stuff a blow dryer up your nose eh? What’s his cure for colon cancer I wonder?
CD, #28
That was so painful to read.
“pointed out in this interview with one of the foremost doctors who has studied the coronavirus…”
I want to meet this mystery “doctor” and ask him where the hell he got his licence…then burn it right in front of him!!!
I’ll tell him in inhale the fumes for health and viral protection, sounds like he might actually believe it.
And in related news…
“Britain urged to self-isolate to halt spread of Conservavirus.”
Symptoms include an affected air of knowing best, compulsive lying, a reduced ability to think and constantly harking back to World War II for no rational reason.
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2020/03/21/britain-urged-to-self-isolate-to-halt-spread-of-conservavirus/
In regard to deliberate fearmongering, this is interesting:
“That deep sense of dread you’re experiencing? That’s how Fox News fans feel all the time” https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/that-deep-sense-of-dread-youre-experiencing-thats-how-fox-news-fans-feel-all-the-time/
-Ze Joos are coming to replace us! Help! Help!
The pharmaikos ritual
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/ancient-greeks-purged-city-states-of-disease-as-they-would-a-human-body-and-it-was-the-most-vulnerable-that-suffered/
So, this is how Trump’s ancient predecessors dealt with pandemics.
Florida…..
I learned recently that the Chinese think the virus is vulnerable to heat and moisture (Henan province is subtropic, and not warm enough during winter, but when temperatures stay above 30 C even at night the virus cannot spread).
Once summer kicks in properly, it should save the elderly in Florida. Those left alive.
California and the Southwest have dry summer air, but the heat may still stop the pandemic. It will of course pick up again after summer, but by then there may be some kind of rational response prepared for it.
@37: And countries like Brazil, Malaysia, and Panama are known for their cold, dry climate now? Let’s stop kidding around, this virus is spreading in tropical countries too. The idea that summer is going to save everyone by halting the spread of the virus just does not add up.
Could this be a secret plot to make Mike Huckabee’s advice about corn cobs look reasonable by comparison?
Well ,the wackaloon in charge of Brazil has said it is all a hoax .
I think we have a winner.
LT. governor of Texas on tucker carlson advocated for seniors sacrificing themselves if need be to save the economy
I will not put a link to that here .
I have had enough there is no hope for the republicans they are no w completely corrupt.
Just why should i die so he can make money?
what is the f’n point of living anyway. that is much worse then let them eat cake.
uncle frogy
High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of COVID-19.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767
.
Re.microraptor @38: –you appear to think any cases at all in tropical places means that ambient temperature, humidity and UV radiation make no difference at all to the rate of infection and the attack rate on the whole population.
This also takes no account of population densities, living conditions, social behaviour, poverty, how much time people spend inside enclosed spaces with air conditioning where external ambient weather conditions are completely irrelevant, etc.
The dumb black/white yes/no thinking is that if optimal ambient conditions have an effect, that should mean R0 = 0, when a few seconds thought should reveal that if someone coughs 1mm sized droplets directly into the face of another person will mean the second person will be infected, regardless of ambient conditions, and likewise if there is contamination of food, eating utensils, etc.
-This is greatly complicated by the vastly different rates of testing between countries, states and municipalities, so currently outside of China, South Korea and Germany, and in much smaller samples like Hong Kong and Singapore which really shouldn’t be extrapolated up to country scale, the data are so unrepresentative as to be useless for drawing any conclusions at all.
While no country has completely random testing of representative samples of population, Germany might be the closest, because they started testing very early and often. South Korea is testing at double the daily rate as Germany, but started later into their epidemic curve, but they are probably coming second closest to a random sample of population.
Uh….136 degrees? This idiot is suggesting we cook our sinuses to medium rare…..
136F = 58C