The Enviable Ignorance of Tucker Carlson
It must be nice to know fentanyl overdose only as a talking point.
Right-wing raconteur Tucker Carlson dropped an X (formerly Twitter ) post (formerly tweet) on Thursday bemoaning the fate of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020. Carlson declares it a “moral atrocity“ that Chauvin was convicted of Floyd’s murder, given the medical examiner’s conclusion that he “most likely“ died of the “fatal levels of fentanyl in his system.” He then spends the rest of his time with Chauvin’s appellate attorney discussing Chauvin’s recent stabbing and alleged misconduct by the Arizona prison in which he serving his sentence.
To be clear, I’m hardly incredulous at reports of depraved apathy within the prison system. And to be even clearer, my policy that people in the state’s custody should be free from wanton violence extends even to killer cops. Our focus here is on Carlson’s statement of what “most likely“ killed George Floyd, and what it reveals about him.
What Tucker Carlson Doesn’t Know
Tucker Carlson appears to know exactly two things about fentanyl:
It comes from somewhere else
It kills people
I have to admit I don’t know anything else about fentanyl that helps make the case for being angry at brown people, so I understand why he might not see a point in learning more. But I do happen to know a lot about fentanyl, both for its legitimate medical uses and what to do when someone’s taken too much. The relevant thing here: George Floyd looked nothing like a fentanyl overdose.
The idea that what the entire world saw in that video comes from two pieces of evidence: the fentanyl found in Floyd’s system in the autopsy and the frequently Google-screencapped fact that fentanyl causes respiratory depression. Carlson’s assertion that he had “fatal levels“ of fentanyl in his system relies on a supposed declaration by medical examiner Andrew Baker. However, that statement doesn’t appear in the autopsy, but in a memo by a prosecutor who had interviewed him, and the memo doesn’t attribute the quote to Baker. Moreover, a single “fatal level“ of fentanyl doesn’t exist: no single user can tolerate the same level as any other, and failed attempts at estimating that tolerance are a leading cause of overdose, because fatal levels of fentanyl vary even between different days for the same user. (Notably, the prosecution debunked their colleague’s speculation at trial.)
But you don’t need to know all that pharmacology and toxicology to know George Floyd wasn’t having an opioid overdose. All you need is to have ever seen an opioid overdose. Despite whatever hackneyed documentary you may have seen, there’s more to a differential diagnosis than finding two symptoms in common. Fentanyl and the other drugs in the opioid class cause respiratory depression, but do so by depressing the central nervous system, and with it the body’s inhale-exhaule autopilot (the respiratory drive). Patients in opioid-induced respiratory depression don’t breathe 22 times per minute, as Floyd was, but slowly and shallowly or not at all. They also don’t kick at police windows and scream for their mothers; in addition to their painkilling properties, opioids like fentanyl are often used to prolong sedation due to that CNS depressant effect. To believe that George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose is to believe that he suffered from only the effect that would have exonerated Derek Chauvin, without the drug’s principal action ever actually happening. (It bears pointing out that methamphetamine was also found in Floyd’s system, but the two classes mediate each others’ effects instead of producing that exactly exonerative set of side effects).
Why I’m Jealous of Tucker Carlson
While I do hold against him the wielding of ignorance for fun and profit, I have to admit I’m a little jealous of Tucker Carlson’s ignorance on the subject. Because it hasn’t been fun (or all that profitable, if I’m being honest) coming to this knowledge.
What Tucker doesn’t know about fentanyl, he’s never had to pray would be of use when Mama found her 31-year-old baby slumped between the toilet seat and the bathtub at 2 a.m. Tucker never wondered if a child could hear her father’s ribs cracking from the other room while someone drew up the narcan. Tucker’s never gotten there too late and had to weave ECG cables around the intractable position in which a body came to rest, gritting his teeth to keep his composure while a family’s world came crashing down. The good cases are no picnic either: young girls needing five strangers to hold them down because a well-meaning bystander threw them into the pit of hell, for good reason but without warning; grown men staring up at the children they’d disappointed again, the panic in their voices giving way to resignation without an ounce of hope in between.
So I don’t begrudge Tucker Carlson and those like him their ignorance. I just wish to hell they’d listen.