Pandemics make people panic. Panic makes people dumb. Behold:

A man thought aquarium cleaner with the same name as the anti-viral drug chloroquine would prevent coronavirus. It killed him.

Basically this is resulting in a “dihydrogen monoxide” freakout. I am personally unconvinced of the utility of chloroquine in treating the virus, because I SIMPLY DON’T KNOW. It’s outside my area of expertise, and studies are fantastically preliminary. But I *do* know that taking a substance that *contains* the chemical in question and then keeling over says *nothing* about either the efficacy or safety of the chemical in question. But this simple fact is beyond ability of much of the media to either recognize or understand:

Arizona man drinks poison and dies. Media blame Trump

I’m leery of any claims of “miracle cures.” Hell, every time I hear someone go on about how great chloroquine is, I flash back to the “forsythia” quack cure in the movie “Contagion.” Still, Trump is not out of line, at least with what seems to be known about chloroquine. But the media freakout is either a transparently obvious attempt to spin the story into a dishonest political attack, or evidence that the reporters are as equally stupid as the people who saw a bottle that said “not for human consumption” and swallowed it anyway… or both.

And in other “morons self-selection for gene pool editing” news…