Trump's Disastrous Presidency Exposed

Illustration: Señor Salme

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

The science magazine, Nature, which is normally carefully apolitical, has come out firmly against re-election of Donald Trump as POTUS because of the damage he has done and will continue to do to science. This article really should be read by anyone interested in getting the best outcome from the November elections for America, for science and for the world.

Pandering to his scientifically illiterate, evangelical base, Trump has not only shown his ignorance of science but his open hostility to it, epitomised as it is by his attitude towards the measures to contain and control the coronavirus pandemic.

For example, on September 13 this year, in Henderson Nevada, in contravention of Nevada state rules for social distancing, Trump held a rally in which thousands of Trumpanzees (fanatical Trump supporters) packed shoulder-to-shoulder, without face-masks, in a warehouse in conditioned that looked designed to maximise the spread of the virus, and late boasted about breaking the rules and getting away with it.

DAILY CONFIRMED NEW CASES (7-DAY MOVING AVERAGE)
Outbreak evolution for the current 10 most affected countries - Oct. 12, 2020

Source: Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center

Trump has consistently down-played the dangers of the virus and admitted in an interview to deliberately doing so at the start of the pandemic, when he managed to convince many people that the pandemic was a hoax or a conspiracy of some sort and that the dangers were minimal, confidently proclaiming that the figures were low and falling and it would all be over by April and decrying the wearing of a face-mask as 'elitist'.

The USA quickly became the world leader in Covid-19 cases and fatalities with over 7.7 million cases (over 20% of the world total with just 4% of the world's population) and over 214,000 deaths. He has refused to allow even basis health guidelines at the White House, putting himself and his staff at risk and eventually having to spend 3 days in hospital being treated for Covid-19. The White House has now become the epi-centre of a major outbreak, yet Trump still down-plays the seriousness of the disease!

America now looks to be on the upward trend of a third wave and should overtake India's falling number of new cases within a day or two to become world leader once again and the first country to record a third significant wave, even bigger than the previous two.

As the Nature article points out, Trump and his staff have:

1. Lied about the dangers of coronavirus.
2. Undermined effort to contain it.
3. Belittled face-masks and social distancing requirements while encouraging people to protest against lockdown measures (particular in Democrat states and cities).
4. Undermined, suppressed and censored government scientists working to study the virus and reduce its harm.
5. Made political tools out of the CDC and the FDA.
6. Ordered these agencies to put out misleading information, issue ill-advised guidelines and promote unproven and potentially harmful treatments for Covid-19.

This has prompted Columbia University epidemiologist, Jeffrey Shaman to accuse Donald Trump, in his role as POTUS, of "not just ineptitude but sabotage - he has sabotaged efforts to keep people safe!". This is born out by Olivia Troye - a member of the White House coronavirus task force - who said in September that Trump had repeatedly derailed efforts to contain the virus and save lives, focusing instead on his own political campaign.

The Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions.

Credit: Kena Betancur/VIEWpress/Corbis via Getty

Other ways in which Trump and his administration has been a disataster for American science, highlighted by Nature, include:

1. Back-pedalling on efforts to curb greehouse gas emmisions, claiming global warming to be another hoax.
2. Weakened rules to limit polution.
3. Reduced the role of science in the US Environmental Protection Agency.
4. Undermined scientific integrity by suppressing or distorting scientific evidence to support political decisions.
5. Eroded America's influence on the world stage by promoting isolationist and 'America First' policies.
6. Made America a less inviting place for foreign students and scientists.
7. Weakened |America's ability to respond to global crises and isolated American science by demonizing organisations such as the World Health Organization.

Trump has promoted chaos, fear and conspiracy theories and, by spreading lies and disinformation, undermined trust in government and in the role of evidence and truth in both democracy and science.

His campaign against measures to reduce and control global warming began even before his election when he declared it to be a hoax and vowed to pull America out of the 2015 Paris agreement. His problem with the agreement was not so much that it was unnecessary but that it had been negotiated and signed by his hated predecessor, Barak Obama. It was part of Trump's obsessive determination to undo and destroy everything the Obama administration had achieved as though trying to expunge his presidency from history - a presidency wsith which he had established his racist credentials, by an obsessive determination to prove its illegitimacy with his 'Birther' campaign.

His appointees dutifully set about dismantling policies put in place by Obama, replacing them with policies more friendly to business but which do little to reduce pollution greenhouse gas emissions. He has set the formal date for exiting the Paris agreement at 4^th November - one day after the presidential election, effectively tying the hands of any successor.

, to head it Trump has also sought to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency by firstly appointing a climate-change denier, Scott Pruitt, to head it. Pruitt signed an order (later overturned by a federal judge) barring scientists with EPA grants from serving on the agency's advisory panel, so depriving it of the advice of experts in the field. Exploiting the privacy rules protecting personal data from being made public, Pruitt banned the agency from acting on the advice of scientists unless their evidence was made public. This effectively killed the agency's actions to reduce particulate emissions on the scientific grounds that they play a significant role in epidemiology. Consequently, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the EPA proposed retaining the current standards for particulate emissions, despite expert advice to the contrary.

But, serious though the current US stance is on environmental protection and climate change, it is in the area of the coronavirus pandemic and America's response to it where the Trump administration's disregard for science and the role of evidence has had its most serious immediate impact.

In February, when on 12 cases of Covid-19 had been recorded, Trump told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post that the virus was "deadly stuff", yet three days later on 10^th February he told his supporters that by April the warm weather would make the virus "miraculously go away". On 26^th February he told a press conference that the virus was "like flu". A week later he told a TV interviewer,"... it is very mild". His administration then did nothing and left it up to local administrations to ty to contain the escalating cases and deaths as best they could, while criticising them for the measures they took.

When Columbia University epidemiologist, Jeffrey Shaman, modelled the spread of coronavirus from February through to May, based on a county by county analysis, they found that, had Trump acted even one week earlier, the death toll could have been halved to 35,000 by May 3^rd and if taken two weeks earlier the death toll could have been reduced by 90%. Trump's response to this finding was to castigate Columbia University as 'an institution that’s very liberal' (dog-whistle code for 'part of an evil conspiracy').

As the death toll mounted, Trump tried to deflect from his own inept handling of the crisis by turning on China, even backing the unsubstantiated claim that the virus has originated in a laboratory in Hunan, and then accusing the WHO of being behind a conspiracy to cover up the outbreak in China in the early stages of the pandemic.

At every stage, the effort of the Trump administration has been to try to control the message, not the virus and to use government agencies to throw their scientific weight behind efforts to present Trump and his cronies in the best possible light and to suppress the effects of their inept and dithering approach to the pandemic. A process that is still continuing as Trump seeks to present his own experience with the virus as somehow a good thing, proving the virus to be "very mild" and both him and the virus as 'Gifts from God'.

Meanwhile there seems to be no lower limit to the credulity and covidiocy of his supporters and especially of his evangelical Christian fundamentalist base, who seem to be doing all they can to ensure as many people catch Covid-19 and die of it as possible whilst believing themselves to be immune or under some magical supernatural protection.

---

Tweet Link