After CNN’s Chris Cuomo violated quarantine guidelines to take a half-hour Easter weekend excursion to East Hampton with his family, it turned out that both his wife, Cristina, and his teenage son, Mario, were infected with the coronavirus. Luckily for young Mario, his father has finally overcome the disease. Unluckily for him, his mother promulgates crackpot medicine to cure the virus.
Cristina Cuomo, who runs wellness blog Purist, has been documenting her family’s already publicized experience with the coronavirus. Some elements of “The Cuomos’ Corona Protocol” include commonsense nutrition, such as an abundance of ginger, olive oil, vitamins B and C, spinach, and cayenne. The rest of it, however, is pseudoscience at best and medical malpractice at worst.
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Some of the questionable treatments Cuomo bought were probably innocuous enough. The most dangerous thing about Cuomo’s “vitamin drip” from Pretty Healthy NYC, a “boutique medical practice” where infusions “can cost several hundred dollars” and does not accept insurance, is that the doctor administering the treatment went into a home riddled with the coronavirus. Cuomo also used a spirometer, a device almost exclusively used by bed-ridden patients suffering from lung illnesses such as pneumonia but with absolutely no evidence of ameliorating the effects of or expediting the resolution of the coronavirus. Finally, she used a pulsed electromagnetic field machine that has been FDA approved generally, but again, has no scientific research backing that it improves the health of those with the coronavirus in any way.
The real kicker is how Cuomo hopes to offset all of that: “Both days, I added 1/2 cup of Clorox to my bathwater to combat the radiation and metals in my system and oxygenate it.”
The above practices are probably pointless, but Cuomo’s chlorine bath is not only potentially dangerous, but also promulgates dangerous myths about the coronavirus.
To be clear, half a cup of Clorox for a bath is about 120 times more chlorine than is necessary to sterilize water out in the wild to drink, and this is for her Hamptons bathtub. That amount of chlorine significantly irritates the skin, dehydrates the skin, breaks down the skin’s vital oils, and dramatically decreases the natural protective barrier that skin provides. Intentionally bathing in a known toxin while your immune system is already compromised increases the risk of dermatological lacerations and abrasions, inadvertently rendering it more likely that you could contract another illness. And not only that. Medical myths about the effects of chlorine on the coronavirus are so widespread that the World Health Organization had to remind the public that chlorine won’t kill an existing coronavirus infection and that “such substances can be harmful to clothes or mucous membranes.” Bleach baths are sometimes used for extreme cases of skin infections, but there’s absolutely no evidence that it combats the coronavirus in any way, let alone “oxygenate” metals in one’s systems.
Eating more cruciferous greens for liver health and extra vitamins and probiotics are always good ideas for general wellness. But the rest of Cuomo’s recommendations are wasteful displays of rank privilege for the wealthy and dangerous pseudoscience for us plebeians.
