By Cosmas Odoemena
After a hard-fought United States Presidential election that took place on November 3, 2020, the Democratic Party’s candidate, Joe Biden defeated the seating President, Donald Trump. Even after the election, it has not been easy for Biden, as Trump has made a smooth transition for Biden Herculean. To discredit the election, Trump has claims after claims that the election was rigged in Biden’s favour, of which there are no proofs. The transition, though belated, is now underway. It’s a question of time before we see the back of Trump.
Donald Trump’s “sins” are many. But to medical scientists like me, perhaps the greatest of all of them is his disdain for science. The number of preventable deaths from COVID-19 in the US can be linked to it. His withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization (WHO), and stopping its funding, in the middle of a pandemic can be linked to it. Not leaving out his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement to fight the climate problem.
To know how far-flung the negative effect of Trump’s disdain for science is, one young male Trump supporter in Nigeria refused to wear a mask, because he believes Trump is “right about hydroxychloroquine”. Not to mention other delusional thoughts from some Nigerians like, “Trump is from God,” “Trump will fight the Antichrist”, “Trump loves the Igbos, he will help our cause.” One fake prophet even said, “Whatever they do, Trump will win.” But for it to work, “prayers must not stop!” Trump who can’t tell the crucifix from a swastika!
The Trump Administration made going against what the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experts advised a past time, especially with policies to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. To control information emanating from the CDC, Trump appointed two government officials and put them in the CDC.
In a similar manner, the job of the head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr Anthony Fauci, was seriously threatened, because of his comments based on scientific evidence.
If, God forbid, Trump had got another four years, the world would have fallen into what astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, referred to as “a demon-haunted world,” a world where, “unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” A Trump world is one “where disease is cured by injecting bleach into our bodies and hurricanes are stopped by dropping nuclear bombs on them,” Sagan quipped.
Trump ordered the cancellation of a grant for supporting research into bat viruses in China, because he believed without any proof, that the coronavirus escaped from a Wuhan laboratory in China.
Many scientists working for the Trump Administration don’t feel valued, and morale is low. And some of these scientists have left, and replaced by those who view science from Trump’s prism.
The most disturbing thing about Trump is that he understands science, but chooses to ignore it. On February 7th, he told the Washington Post’s investigative journalist, Bob Woodward, that he knew that COVID-19 was more dangerous than the flu and that it spreads through the air. Yet, on March 9th, Trump on Twitter, said, the “common flu” was worse than the novel coronavirus.
During the solar eclipse in 2017, against age-long scientific advice not to watch the solar eclipse without wearing a sun filter, Trump came out onto the balcony of the White House and gazed at the sun, which even a schoolboy knows can destroy the eyes. Trump has an obsessive compulsion to go against scientific rules, even if it’s self-destructive. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of people to lap up his ideology.
With Joe Biden there is sobriety. In his election plans on how he will tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden said his government’s priority will be on a “decisive public health response that ensures the wide availability of free testing; the elimination of all cost barriers to preventive care and treatment for COVID-19; the development of a vaccine; and the full deployment and operation of necessary supplies, personnel, and facilities”. He also said he will give economic support to those the pandemic has affected their means of livelihood.
With Biden in power, control measures for COVID-19 will be based on hard science, not what the Lancet called, “questionable decisions made by Trump’s administration, such as the endorsement of hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic and therapeutic option and the licensing of remdesivir for treatment of COVID-19 patients by the Food and Drug Administration, despite lack of efficacy in the Solidarity trial.”
Biden has already promised to put back in place the US’ financial support for the WHO. It’s also hoped that the cordial relationship between the US and the WHO that was strained by Trump, will soon be repaired.
Biden said he will “stop the political theater and willful misinformation that has heightened confusion and discrimination,” and will convene daily briefings which will “put scientists and public health leaders front and center,” and make scientists working for government “not fear retribution or public disparagement for performing their jobs.”
Biden, together with his Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, has always led by example by wearing his mask in public. In furtherance of this, he will collaborate with state governors and local officials to encourage Americans to wear masks, and to keep physical distancing, even as the number of new cases of COVID-19 has continued to hit the ceiling.
Biden said he will remove Trump appointees with “suspect scientific credentials”, or those of them who “hold views far out of the mainstream.” There would be no place for “flat-out science deniers”, they will be replaced by appointees “who not only understand the science, but have done it themselves,” says one lobbyist who didn’t want his name mentioned, because he still deals with the Trump administration.
Biden will have his job cut out to change the mindset of many Americans who carry on living Trump’s devil-may-care attitude in the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a tragedy for America — and the world, that in a pandemic of this magnitude it’s Trump that is in power. Make no mistake about it, with Trump there is never going to be a headway with the fight to defeat the virus in the US, vaccine or not. And until the US gets it right, the world will never be free of the virus, and that much-needed closure the world has been hoping for will never come.
Dr Odoemena, medical practitioner, Lagos. @cuzdetriumph