In March, an Arizona woman, now known to be Wanda Lenius, said she and her husband ingested fish-tank cleaner because they had heard President Trump tout one of its compounds (chloroquine phosphate) as a potentially effective way to prevent COVID-19. The husband died, and the wife ended up in the ICU.


“We saw Trump on TV — every channel — and all of his buddies and that this was safe,” she told NBC News. “Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure.”

Alana Goodman has been doing some killer reporting on the story at the Washington Free Beacon.

On March 30, Goodman reported that the woman who ingested fish-tank cleaner had donated to a Democratic PAC that bills itself as part of the “pro-science resistance” to Donald Trump.

On Friday, Goodman published a new report: “Man Who Died Ingesting Fish Tank Cleaner Remembered as Intelligent, Levelheaded Engineer.”

An excerpt:

In a phone interview with the Free Beacon, Wanda said she and her husband had seen President Trump praise a drug called chloroquine on the news, citing preliminary studies that showed it could be a promising treatment for coronavirus. She said she remembered purchasing a jar of “chloroquine phosphate” years before to clean a fish tank. The powder form of the drug is sold by aquarium suppliers and is used to treat viral outbreaks in large fish tanks. She told the Free Beacon she had mentioned this to her husband “and he kind of laughed at me, you know. It was just a regular conversation.” She said she didn’t think about chloroquine again until a few days later, March 22, when Lenius confessed to her that he had hurt his leg while riding his new dirt bike and might have to go see a doctor. “I’d already stocked the house with groceries and extra dog food and everything was set. We were ready to self-isolate,” said Wanda. “He didn’t want to tell me that he got hurt bad because he knew I was upset. I didn’t want him to ride a motorcycle, he was 68 and I didn’t want him getting hurt.” Wanda Lenius said her husband was planning to schedule a doctor’s appointment to have his leg looked at and the couple worried he might pick up coronavirus at the clinic. That’s when, she said, she reached for the fish tank cleaner in her pantry. Asked if she and Lenius had a conversation about taking the chloroquine at that time, she told the Free Beacon: “No. I mean, it was really kind of a spur of the moment thing,” adding that the couple ingested “one teaspoon and some soda” each — at least four times the lethal limit.

Read the whole thing.