Dr. Rick Bright, the pandemic preparedness leader who was recently dumped by the Trump regime for the crime of committing science, contended yesterday at a House hearing that the uphill fight against COVID-19 should be led by health experts – in other words, people who actually know what they’re talking about.
It shouldn’t be necessary to state the obvious, but Trump and his troglodytes have made it so. The populist right has been waging war on science for many years now – most notably, by denying the reality of climate change – but now, with the Trump Death Clock tolling 87,000, the day of reckoning has arrived.
Will we as a nation, in this increasingly urgent hour, respect science and save as many lives as possible – or will we retreat into ignorance and make hundreds of thousands of people expendable? Rick Bright, in his testimony, framed it perfectly:
“We need to be truthful with the American people. They want the truth. They can handle the truth. Truth, no matter how unpleasant, decreases the fear generated by uncertainty. The truth must be based on scientific evidence – and not filtered for political reasons. We must know and appreciate what we are up against. We have the world’s greatest scientists – they must be permitted to lead. Let them speak truthfully without fear of retribution. We must listen so that the government can then take the most powerful steps to save lives.“
When I heard that, I was reminded of something that Galileo said, back in the 17th century, when he was jailed for voicing his science-based conclusion that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. The beleaguered astronomer assailed “the extraordinary stupidity of the mob.”
But at least the science-haters of Galileo’s time had an excuse: Science was a new concept that challenged faith-based doctrines. There’s no such excuse today – although you wouldn’t know it, listening to the mob leader. Just a few hours after Bright pleaded for science in Washington, Trump said this during a gig in Pennsylvania:
“When you test (for COVID-19), you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”
Remember Bright’s warning, that science should not be filtered “for political reasons”? Trump just gave his game away. If we didn’t do any testing, he’d have lower virus stats; and if he had lower stats, he could maybe get an easier ride to re-election. But if he lets science call the shots, and expands testing for the greater good, it’d be bad for him. And, of course, it’s all about him. Which means that science, like the free and independent press, must be the enemy.
Bright certainly is. Before the guy had a chance to testify, Trump trash-tweeted him. In real life, Bright has great creds (a doctorate in immunology, a career devoted to vaccine development, four years at the helm of a federal pandemic preparedness agency…until his April ouster for raising a stink about the regime’s ill-preparedness), but here’s what Trump thumbed yesterday morning: “Never met him or even heard of him, but to me he is a disgruntled employee.”
Well, yeah. Of course Bright is “disgruntled.” Watching an incompetent anti-science regime screw up a national health emergency, and needlessly kill off tens of thousands of Americans, would surely spark adverse feelings – especially if that person had trained for decades to be ready for precisely this kind of crisis. From yesterday’s testimony, here’s what disgruntlement sounds like:
“If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities…Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.“
How have we blundered into this perfect storm? Trump is not entirely to blame. He’s merely the most blatant manifestation of the anti-“elitist” populism that has run rampant in our culture. The Republican party has long nurtured and exploited it (most notably, by denying the scientific consensus on climate change), and Trump is its fruition.
You may not remember (or perhaps you willed yourself to forget) that candidate Trump in a 2015 debate auditioned at length for the job of quack-in-chief. With no evidence whatsoever (because no scientific evidence exists), he popularized the crackpot belief that vaccines cause autism – bowing to what Galileo indeed called the stupidity of the mob:
“Autism has become an epidemic. Twenty-five years ago, 35 years ago, you look at the statistics, not even close. It has gotten totally out of control…You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump – I mean, it looks just like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child, and we’ve had so many instances, people that work for me. Just the other day, two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”
Totally made up. But did he pay a political price for voicing such ignorance? Nope. Republican primary voters swept him to the nomination.
And Trump’s “base” still remains hostile to science – as evidenced yesterday, on the House health panel, by how the Republican members questioned Rick Bright. Mostly, they talked up the alleged miracle benefits of Trump’s favorite quack remedy, hydroxychloroquine. But Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma simply decided to shoot the messenger. Bright was summarily demoted to a lesser job last month; he has hypertension, and he’s currently getting sick pay from Uncle Sam. Mullin scoffed: “You say you have hypertension, yet you are able to do these interviews, make these reports, and prepare for this hearing…you are well enough to come here, while you are still getting paid by the United States government…(I’m) just having a hard time tracking that.”
I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that Mullin is tracking the wrong problem. But this is the Republican mentality. Michael Gerson, one of the sanest conservative commentators, laments that “a substantial portion of the right has turned hard against science and expertise, as if knowledge and experience were somehow disqualifying…We have seen some go defiantly maskless. Perhaps the next step will be proudly uncovered coughing. Or the patriotic licking of escalator handrails.”
Or as Galileo wrote to a friend in 1610, “My dear Kepler, what would you say of the (people) who…have steadfastly refused to cast a glance at the telescope? What will me make of this? Shall we laugh or shall we cry?”