If the political left is to be believed, every little thing that former President Donald Trump says is a complete bald-faced lie. Thusly, everything he says or does can be made into controversy and is to be highly debated.
Case and point are the comments he made last year about the prospect that sunlight and heat could be used to combat the then-novel coronavirus and its effects on the human body. Thanks to his gathering of some of the brightest minds in both the scientific and medical fields and his administration’s pushing to find a vaccine as soon as possible, tons of research was being done on the virus.
And what was being found suggested that something about sunlight or warmer weather seems to mitigate the dangers of COVID.
Trump had the fortitude to let this little-known fact be heard.
CNN mockingly reported on president’s comments, saying, “After Bill Bryan, the acting undersecretary of science and technology for the Department of Homeland Security, explained during the briefing that new experiments show the coronavirus does not fare well under sunlight or heat, the President suggested that Americans who have the virus could treat it by going out into the sunlight on a hot day.”
The liberal-backed outlet then appeared to quote then-President Trump:
“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.”
The network then turned a joke Trump made about the effects of sunlight on the virus being similar to using disinfectants for “a cleaning” into something that seemed to suggest the President wanted Americans to inject disinfectants to treat themselves as well.
Of course, with the virus being still so new to the scene in April of 2020 and mainstream media holding out for a Biden presidency, Trump’s comments were ridiculed and used to further the ratings of the liberal press everywhere.
However, since then, the studies on COVID-19 have continued, and recent findings seem to do nothing but back up Trump’s claims that sunlight just might be part of our solution to returning to normal.
According to a multi-university study whose results were released last week, “a team of researchers from UC Santa Barbara, Oregon State University, University of Manchester and ETH Zurich examines another of SARS-CoV-2’s well-known characteristics – its vulnerability to sunlight. Their conclusion? It might take more than UV-B rays to explain sunlight inactivation of SARS-CoV-2.”
Per a letter in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers had a goal to prove just how adequate sunlight, or UV-B rays, in particular, was in the destruction or “inactivation” of the disease. It was predicted that with prolonged exposure to ultraviolet rays, the virus would eventually become “inactive” or be disabled.
This theory comes from the known fact that sunlight, as a splendid source of Vitamin D, can have extreme benefits to the human body’s immune system. In the case of many other viral diseases, sunlight has proven to essentially neutralize the threat and, in fact, be a viable form of treatment.
What researchers found is that theory was correct, at least in part.
Sunlight of UV-B lamps did, in fact, “inactivate” the virus. But the timing was all wrong.
“The theory predicts that inactivation should happen an order of magnitude slower,” said UC Santa Barbara’s Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz.
The study findings reported, “viruses in simulated saliva and exposed to UV-B lamps were inactivated more than eight times faster than would have been predicted by the theory.” And “(cultured samples) in a complete growth medium before expose to UV-B were inactivated more than three times faster than expected.”
So Trump was right after all… again.
Of course, as these findings, or at least the timing of them, were somewhat unexpected, researchers say more information and testing is needed.
Luzzatto-Fegiz says, “scientists don’t yet know what’ going on. Our analysis points to the need for additional experiments to separately test the effects of specific light wavelengths and medium composition.”
In the meantime, you can be rest assured that soaking of the rays is more beneficial than ever; you just might want to apply some sunscreen while you’re at it.