How Trump damaged science -- and why it could take decades to recover

[riversedge]

How Trump damaged science — and why it could take decades to recover

Link to tweet

?s=20
An older article but worth the read.





NEWS FEATURE
05 October 2020


Update 07 October 2020

How Trump damaged science — and why it could take decades to recover


The US president’s actions have exacerbated the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States, rolled back environmental and public-health regulations and undermined science and scientific institutions. Some of the harm could be permanent.




https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02800-9
Jeff Tollefson

Cartoon of President Trump standing in the sea surrounded by viruses, burning trees, tombstones, broken beakers and pollution.

Illustration by Señor Salme

People packed in by the thousands, many dressed in red, white and blue and carrying signs reading “Four more years” and “Make America Great Again”. They came out during a global pandemic to make a statement, and that’s precisely why they assembled shoulder-to-shoulder without masks in a windowless warehouse, creating an ideal environment for the coronavirus to spread.

US President Donald Trump’s rally in Henderson, Nevada, on 13 September contravened state health rules, which limit public gatherings to 50 people and require proper social distancing. Trump knew it, and later flaunted the fact that the state authorities failed to stop him. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the president has behaved the same way and refused to follow basic health guidelines at the White House, which is now at the centre of an ongoing outbreak. The president spent 3 days in a hospital after testing positive for COVID-19, and was released on 5 October.

Trump’s actions — and those of his staff and supporters — should come as no surprise. Over the past eight months, the president of the United States has lied about the dangers posed by the coronavirus and undermined efforts to contain it; he even admitted in an interview to purposefully misrepresenting the viral threat early in the pandemic. Trump has belittled masks and social-distancing requirements while encouraging people to protest against lockdown rules aimed at stopping disease transmission. His administration has undermined, suppressed and censored government scientists working to study the virus and reduce its harm. And his appointees have made political tools out of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ordering the agencies to put out inaccurate information, issue ill-advised health guidance, and tout unproven and potentially harmful treatments for COVID-19.

“This is not just ineptitude, it’s sabotage,” says Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York City, who has modelled the evolution of the pandemic and how earlier interventions might have saved lives in the United States. “He has sabotaged efforts to keep people safe.”.....................

[riversedge]

1. We see the Trump anti-science Effect right now-the anti-vaxxers and anti-masks!!

[TheRealNorth]

2. This has been going on for much longer

I remember Republicans still downplaying the link between smoking and lung cancer back in the '80's.

Then there is climate science....

[elleng]

3. WILL take decades to recover,

considering the #### idiots bound up in trmp's damaging rhetoric, including 'educators.'

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I used to believe that science was indisputable.

With the exception of new facts that would alter theories and principles. Math and Logic. Measurements. If there would be debate, it would be between scientists, not individuals with little or no education -- or interest in this subject. There was a certainty that science would rise above politics.

I have found the examination of the Virus and the Vaccine to be disheartening. If core facts can't be universally accepted, I just don't know where we go from here.