Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, has a piece in the Atlantic castigating the political class for promoting misinformation during the pandemic. He did his argument no favors when he wrote that former president Donald Trump advised “injecting bleach to treat COVID-19.”
The notion that Trump told vulnerable Americans to inoculate themselves with household disinfectants has become an article of faith among Democrats, and faith is all that buttresses the allegation. The former president’s remarks were typically muddled, but he suggested that the option should be studied — he did not himself recommend it. That may be a minor distinction, but it is one that the noblest of self-appointed truth-tellers should observe; particularly when they are relying on their authority to back up the argument that the pandemic’s lingering aftereffects were an unavoidable by-product of necessary public policy.
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