A limerick a week #188

‘Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind. (King Lear Act 4 scene 1) 

Last November saw the publication of an insider’s view of Donald Trump’s presidency. The Washington Post quoted the author of ‘Anonymous’, describing Trump as being:

like a twelve-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport.

and

It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him … you’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.

Of course this was before the Coronavirus pandemic. Since when Trump appears to have put his faith in hydroxychloroquine as a cure-all tonic for Covid-19 infections despite the scepticism of, er, actual medically qualified experts.

Since then, the Washington Post has reported that the States’  National Institutes of Health recommend against the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination “because of the potential for toxicities. The NIH offers no recommendation about use of hydroxychloroquine alone”. 

The Post subsequently reported that a “study conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs suggest that those treated with hydroxychloroquine or hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin didn’t see marked improvement from use of the drugs. The rate of death was higher in groups treated with the drugs than among those who didn’t receive the treatment.” Indeed the American Food and Drugs Administration subsequently warned against their use due to “serious heart rhythm problems”.

Any normal person would take these comments and outcomes as notice to leave things to the experts, but not the White House snake-oil merchant. Now we’re told that internally applied doses of UV light and injections of disinfectant will stop the virus in its tracks. Only a moron would propound such beliefs.

It’s not just me that thinks that. The Graun reports that Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, added: “It is incomprehensible to me that a moron like this holds the highest office in the land and that there exist people stupid enough to think this is OK. I can’t believe that in 2020 I have to caution anyone listening to the president that injecting disinfectant could kill you.”

It was  in 1978 that Jilted John sang “Gordon is a moron”. Time for someone to update the lyrics, methinks. Meantime, here’s the limerick…

A moron once had an expectant
Belief that a certain injectant
Would cure all our ills
Without vaccines or pills
So he dosed us with pure disinfectant.

… and courtesy of a friend:

A vicar in the US has died after ingesting disinfectant. It is said Donald Trump has been charged with bleach of the priest

Postscript: Of course it’s not just the USA that has imbecilic morons embedded in its political structures.

My home-town county has one such candidate. The fact that some NHS health workers operating on the Coronavirus frontline without suitable PPE have died as a result of a Covid-19 an infection, contracted most probably at work, is no reason to politicise the issue according to Workington’s M.P., one Mark Jenkinson. This is utterly shameful… 

Published by

LanterneRouge

😎 Former scientist, now graduated to a life of leisure; Family man (which may surprise the family - it certainly surprises him); Likes cycling and old-fashioned B&W film photography; Dislikes greasy-pole-climbing 'yes men'; Thinks Afterlife (previously known as Thea Gilmore) should be much better known than she is; Values decency over achievement.

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