Trump has never professed a love of or even belief in science, but two weeks before the election, he has decided to attack science anew by castigating scientific advisers and health officials. At a time when the country should be bracing for a difficult winter with the twin dangers of the flu and COVID-19, as temperature dips and coronavirus cases continue to rise, Trump has decided to shrug off the virus entirely and attack health officials instead, calling Anthony Fauci a “disaster,” and health officials “idiots.”
After his COVID-19 diagnosis, Donald Trump said he learned a lot about the virus “by really going to school”. Buy boy, did he learn all the wrong lessons in school.
Everyone who was hopeful that the infection might force Trump to take a few steps back was sorely disappointed. The president went for a joyride to greet supporters while still hospitalized at Walter Reed and returned to campaigning less than two weeks after testing positive. He has since claimed that he beat the virus and is immune to it without any idea of how the virus works or immunity is acquired, even as it became clear that reinfections from the virus were happening. Even Twitter was forced to flag his tweet for misleading information when he said he can’t get or give the virus to anyone.
Trump also wrongly touted the antibody cocktail he received as a miracle cure, and irresponsibly asserted that it should be made available free to everyone – with no understanding of the basics of how a treatment that is still in clinical trials would move to widespread use or be mass produced and delivered to millions.
I sure hope our schools are better than this because Trump clearly learned nothing from his experience.
Saying he beat the virus— after being whisked off to the best medical team in the world within 24 hours of diagnosis, receiving an experimental antibody cocktail, a rigorous regimen of remdesivir, and heavy steroids—is nothing short of an insult to thousands of Americans who have suffered immensely from the infection. His act of wrenching his mask from his face on the White House balcony after his return from hospital simply to reinforce his “strongman” persona is an affront to the over 220,000 people who have died from the virus largely due to his recklessness and mishandling of the crisis.
Not to mention the people that he directly put in harm’s way by inviting them to gatherings in close settings with no social distancing: Chris Christie who ended up in the ICU after contracting COVID-19 and has since admitted that not wearing a mask was a mistake; Herman Cain, who died from the virus after attending a Trump rally in Arizona where no social distancing or masking rules were followed; and the countless White House and campaign staff in Trump’s inner circle who’ve tested positive.
Despite all this, Trump has continued to diminish the disease’s severity, saying, “I had to confront [the virus] so the American people stopped being afraid of it” – sending the wrong message to millions of Americans. Actually, we need to be very afraid of the coronavirus. It is not cowardly to wear a mask and stay indoors, and it certainly isn’t brave to walk around maskless without social distancing as we continue to see at Trump rallies. As Jonathan Chait astutely observed, Trump reframed his recklessness as courage, and his supporters bought it.
And now he wants to reopen schools because his son Barron seemingly had an easy time with it. He probably did, as do most kids. But most kids are also asymptomatic, can carry high levels of virus, and function as silent spreaders.
But Trump either doesn’t understand any of it, or is willing to consciously ignore the facts in order to please his supporters. As he himself said, “People are tired of Covid…..People are saying whatever. Just leave us alone. They’re tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.”
Our president, ladies and gentleman. Calling on supporters to flout the rules in the face of the cold, hard facts of science, when over 220,000 people are dead.
It’s hard to fathom the long term consequences of the Trump presidency – not only its political and social repercussions, but also its impact on science and scientific progress, and the issues affected by it, such as research, public health, and the environment. We already know that the EPA was forced to censor truths about climate change and the White House controlled the CDC’s messaging on COVID-19.
Thanks to a Democratic push, the Government Accountability Office is now tasked with investigating the Trump administration’s political influence over the FDA and CDC. That’s a start.
But while the impact of a single term of a Trump presidency is scary enough, four more years could spell untold disasters for our scientific establishment and progress, not to mention other dire consequences for everything from healthcare to social justice. Let’s vote him out on November 3rd (or earlier).