Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
The nation’s top health official revealed this week that his personal calculus for surviving the COVID-19 pandemic was informed by decades of snorting cocaine off bathroom fixtures.
Snorting off the wood, or going straight for the rim? (borisblik/depositphotos)
Kennedy made the remarks on the podcast of comedian Theo Von, a venue that previous HHS secretaries have historically not used to discuss their drug histories. The two men met years ago in recovery. Von became a comedian. Kennedy became the man in charge of deciding whether your grandmother’s insulin remains safe and available. Both outcomes are technically success stories, though only one of them now shapes regulatory policy for a nation that largely does not know this conversation actually happened.
“I was not scared of a germ,” Kennedy explained, before describing the specific reason for his lack of concern about the pandemic. “I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”
The statement represents perhaps the most honest public health cost-benefit analysis issued by the department since its founding in 1953, though officials declined to confirm whether toilet-seat exposure data has been incorporated into any formal pathogen resistance guidance. An HHS spokesperson, reached for comment, confirmed only that the Secretary “has been open about his recovery journey,” which is certainly one way to describe it. Historians could not immediately recall a Cabinet member citing bathroom drug use as credentials, though records from the 1970s remain incomplete.
Kennedy told Von that he weighed the virus against his certainty that untreated addiction would kill him, and chose to roll the dice. “For me it’s survival,” he said, a sentence that takes on new dimensions when spoken by someone who now oversees $1.7 trillion in health spending for 330 million Americans who have never put their face that close to a public restroom toilet seat (probably).
Officials say the Secretary remains focused on his work, which this week includes overseeing the nation’s response to infectious disease, food safety, and the psychological well-being of children, presumably in ascending order of irony.
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