Sarcasm step aside please, let science fight virus

Days after the United States leader suggested during a White House briefing that injecting disinfectants could kill the novel coronavirus, calls to the New York City's Poison Control Center for exposure to bleach and other household cleaners have more than doubled.

While the US leader now says he was being "sarcastic", it seems many people in the US took him seriously. Just the way US presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted that he couldn't imagine having to tell people not to drink bleach, there is a need to explain how disinfectants work too.

Viruses are the simplest forms of life and it is extremely easy to kill them－extreme temperatures, extreme humidity, extreme acidity or alkalinity can kill viruses within minutes, or even seconds. The problem arises when viruses enter the human body. All the above-mentioned methods will no longer be effective, because, internally, they would kill healthy human cells too.

No disinfectant is smart enough to distinguish between human cells and viruses or bacteria. So disinfectants, if injected or consumed, can damage human organs faster than the novel coronavirus pneumonia.

The best way to kill bacteria inside the human body is by using antibiotics derived from microbes that kill others without hurting themselves. Similarly, there are antiviral drugs dealing with internal viruses. However, viruses are much smaller than bacteria and live mostly inside human cells, making research and development of new antiviral drugs difficult.

Therefore, it is difficult to kill internal viruses; there are no effective drugs against the diseases they cause either. The only effective weapon is our immune system. However, drugs help strengthen the body's immune system to better fight the virus.

That's also the philosophy behind fighting the novel coronavirus－strengthen the human immune system and it will do the job. There is certainly no need to inject any disinfectant. In short, it is best to let professionals－like doctors－and not politicians, tackle this virus.