Covid-19 Kills 200,000 in the US As Trump Vilifies Science, Prioritizes Politics

By Staff, Agencies

With COVID-19 death toll reaching 200,000 across the United States, President Donald Trump is busy in an ongoing war against his administration’s own scientists.

Over the past six months, the Trump administration has prioritized politics over science at key moments, refusing to follow expert advice that might have contained the spread of the novel coronavirus and the disease, COVID-19, it causes.

Trump and his entourage have routinely dismissed experts’ assessments of the gravity of the pandemic, and of the measures needed to bring it under control. They have tried to muzzle scientists who dispute the administration’s rosy spin.

Just last week, Trump described Dr. Robert Redfield, a virologist and head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as “confused” because he said a vaccine was not likely until late 2021. Trump, without evidence, said it could be ready before the election.

While there is no indication that Trump’s desperation for a vaccine has affected the science or safety of the process, his insistence that one would be ready before the election is stoking mistrust in the very breakthrough he hopes will help his reelection.

The Trump vs. science dynamic has been evident from the very beginning.

In late January, after the virus had first emerged in Wuhan, China, the CDC launched its emergency operations center. What was needed, epidemiologists said, was aggressive public education and contact tracing to identify and isolate the first cases before the disease spread got out of control.

Instead, Trump publicly played down the virus in those crucial first weeks, even though he privately acknowledged the seriousness of the threat.

“I wanted to always play it down,” the president told journalist Bob Woodward in March.

By mid-March, hospitals in New York and elsewhere were deluged with patients and storing bodies in refrigerated trucks.