Today in things you shouldn't gargle:

I guess it's kind of...well, comforting isn't the word, but is there a word or a phrase that captures the feeling you get when you see elected officials in other countries displaying even a fraction of the idiocy so many of our own so readily embrace? No? Not even in German?

"Nien, but then we believed the scientists
when they said to take the pandemic seriously."

-Some German stereotype

Yeah, that red-ish stuff they smear on
people before they go into surgery. 

Because this. Not going to click? Fine. It's about how the Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura of Osaka Prefecture in Japan told everybody that if COVID-19 patients gargle with povidone-iodine, it will prevent them from getting the most serious symptoms. The Governor was citing some study done in Osaka that said it would mitigate the-huh? No it won't, of course it won't. How do I know? Well, like everyone who's not a doctor, I'm not a doctor, but doctors both in Japan and from the World Health Organization agree that this is nonsense. Even Governor Yoshimura agrees. Which...

Pictured: Tuesday Yoshimura, seen here
saying several words about how his magic
iodine gargle has a preventative effect. 

Yeah, on Tuesday, Yoshimura talked up the health benefits of gargling povidone-iodine. But then everyone started clearing out the drugstore of the stuff and doctors pointed out how preposterous the claim was, so on Wednesday Yoshimura said:

"I never said a single word about it having a preventative effect..."

-Wednesday Yoshimura

And yeah, ok, he didn't use the phrase "preventative effect" but he did say that it's better than gargling with nothing and I'm not sure it is. I mean, that stuff can't possibly taste good, and since it doesn't goddamn do anything, I'd suggest that it is better than gargling with nothing.

Incidentally, how does one gargle with nothing?

"So maybe stop talking?"

-Doctors everywhere

Also, despite what he claimed on Wednesday, and his not at all being a doctor, he totally did say:

"I even think that gargling with povidone-iodine could defeat the Coronavirus. But it's still in the research phase and we can't say anything definitive. "

-Governor Yoshimura, saying

something definitive

So in many ways Governor Yoshimura
should, I don't know, shut the hell up?

Oh, and my claim back there about his not being a doctor? I felt bad about just saying that without evidence, so I looked him up. Indeed he has no medical training, but I also learned that he canceled Osaka's Sister City relationship with San Francisco because the Pan-Asian Alliance put up a statue honoring the thousands of women Imperial Japan's military used as sex slaves during World War II. Yoshimura insisted that the statue "present[s] uncertain claims and one-sided claims as historical facts." Super.

So I guess we're not the only country where officials make wild and unsubstantiated claims which, when called out on, they insist that they never made and then they accept no responsibility for the havoc they caused. Nor are we the only one with nationalist goons trying to other side history's most shameful moments. You know, in some ways I wonder if the biggest problem right now isn't a virus, but rather shitheels holding high office.

In Japan these shitheels lead to a rush on povidone-iodine.
Here we end up with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands.