Donald Trump, M.D.

Last Thursday at a press briefing with the Coronavirus Task Force, Donald Trump said, “I mean, there’s been a rumor that — you know, a very nice rumor — that you go outside in the sun, or you have heat and it does have an effect on other viruses.”

He went on to ask Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, to “speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure” the new coronavirus.

It appears that the U.S. president is a newly-minted specialist in the treatment of COVID-19. The esteemed doctor now speaks for himself as an expert consultant on the disease.

I was shocked to learn that the specter of the coronavirus has grown so large that it can now warp the mind of the leader of the most powerful country on earth so that he pontificates on the virus at length despite knowing nothing about it whatsoever. But, as the world’s most recognized virologist, Trump has surely reserved a future place of honor in an advanced medical laboratory, where he’ll serve under the title of “Official Purveyor of Exceptional Therapeutic Prophecies.” Something along those lines, at least.

It’s often said that Trump is completely obsessed with the coronavirus. For good reason, too, as there’s been a rumor going around that Trump dreamed the virus had penetrated White House security! As it headed straight for its next victim in the Oval Office, it nearly reached Trump’s very own throat. Were it not for the ray of sunshine that fortuitously peeked through the curtains behind him, the foul invader would surely have succeeded. Thank God, then, that it burned just in time! A foul smelling plume of smoke wafted along the hall, reaching the journalists waiting patiently for the day’s press conference.

Every day, Trump continues to ride this admirable winning streak on the way to a second term. His reelection campaign, clearly affected politically by the pandemic, will have nearly $2 billion in the bank to put toward the war effort. Trump’s daily TV appearances, filled with colorful infographics and awe-inspiring rhetoric, have become a favorite meal for millions of Americans who eagerly eat up his every word. The media then export it to the rest of the world to feast on the riches of Trump’s intellect, his viral cure-alls and medicinal prophecies available for all to see. In the new “Viral Wars” we find ourselves in, Trump has become a monumental thought leader. The American medical community would do well to attend to his every thought and whim.

Trump looks at the pandemic with an imaginative eye, his incredible suggestions for how to treat the virus coming before any of his usual political diatribes. The accusations he levies at China and the World Health Organization resemble the ideological warfare between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He’s now caught in a fantasy world where China has struck him with a “viral bomb” in an imaginary biological war. In short, the coronavirus has all but completely taken over Trump’s inner mind. Everything he now does comes in light of that paranoid perspective.

CNN, a media outlet opposed to Trump’s coronavirus policies, meticulously exposed Trump’s ideas on the coronavirus to the world and in doing so made quick work of his would-be sunlight prophecies. The network published a scientific report that concluded bright sunlight is in no way a potential treatment for coronavirus, nor for other viruses like influenza and SARS, and that for a host of others reasons, pathogens like these tend to peak in March and April and then recede afterward. But please note, should it need to be said, that this phenomenon doesn’t have anything to do with a season’s dry heat, or how pretty a bright summer day looks, or anything else to do with the sun for that matter. The real treatments for coronavirus are still undergoing clinical trials, of course, but Trump has no time to be patient.

Of all the surprising facts revealed by this virus, perhaps the strangest is how closely American and Arab superstitions overlap when it comes to this nexus of politics, medicine and religious thinking we now find ourselves in. The coronavirus has fundamentally disrupted our collective reason and judgment, and a host of other pernicious mental ailments have showed up along with its sudden emergence. In circumstances like these, it is little surprise that rumors like these go around.