Do we already inject disinfectants?

A certain leader of the free world supposedly suggested we should inject disinfectants to combat COVID 19. What he actually said, if you read the transcripts and not the headlines, was more like a statement suggesting we are looking into using disinfectants as a treatment, but that’s neither here nor there. Injecting disinfectants doesn’t sound like a smart idea. All of our household disinfectants have strongly worded warnings to not let the stuff get inside your body. However, I think it’s worth noting that, as a society, we’ve already accepted injecting disinfectants into our system. Let me explain…

First of all, let me just say that this post isn’t supposed to be pro or anti Trump, or pro or anti medicine, including vaccines. It’s just a thought piece to encourage you to more thoughtfully critique the information that comes your way, rather than easily jumping on “information” and hate bandwagons. 

Formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde are a couple ingredients commonly found in vaccines that are considered disinfectants. That’s right, we already inject disinfectants as a form of treatment. To be fair, these compounds aren’t used as treatment. They are used to inactivate toxins from the bacteria within the vaccines themselves. These ingredients, like household disinfectants, are toxic and not safe for consumption, let alone direct injection. However, according to vaccine makers, the amounts are so insignificant that it rarely harms the person being injected. This means, in theory anyway, that we could create a treatment for COVID that contains some amount of disinfectant. Not enough to be dangerous to most humans, but enough to affect the virus. And who knows, the vaccines they are already experimenting with may already contain disinfectants, but I haven’t seen any ingredient lists yet. 

One could also make the argument that some forms of chemotherapy are similar to the idea of injecting disinfectants as a form of treatment. I’m not going to make that argument, but one could.