Restore America to sanity
Falsifiability is one of the things I love about science. Science makes and tests hypotheses. When a tested hypothesis is demonstrated not to align with reality, a new hypothesis is formulated. The early days of the pandemic provides us with a recent example of this scientific method in action. At first, many epidemiologists considered that wearing a mask was not essential to controlling the disease, or at least not as essential as having more masks available to healthcare workers. Scientists now suspect that to be no longer true.
In a recent interview, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace put it this way to Donald Trump: “The CDC says that if everybody wore a mask for four to six weeks we could get this under control. Do you regret not wearing a mask from the start and would you consider … a national mandate that people had to wear masks?” To which Trump replied, “No, I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that, no. And I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wore a mask everything disappears. Hey, Doctor Fauci said ‘Don’t wear a mask.’”
Here is what Dr. Fauci now says about that: “I don’t regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task-force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm’s way every day to take care of sick people.”
In other words, at one time Dr. Fauci agreed with the conventional science that wearing masks was less important than making sure healthcare workers had them. Now that more data has come our way it turns out that everybody wearing a mask is the way to control the disease. But no, Trump is going to hold Fauci to his own misinterpretation of Fauci’s original statement. Trump will not, in other words, let science make the decisions, because he doesn’t really understand how and why science works.
Trump says he doesn’t “believe” the latest findings of epidemiological science as it relates to coronavirus, namely that wearing a mask is proving to be efficacious. But why doesn’t Trump believe it? If you’re going to contradict the latest findings of medical science then you ought to have a good reason, particularly when being wrong could cost tens of thousands of more Americans lives. Since Trump doesn’t offer any reason why he doesn’t “believe” that wearing a mask is effective, I’m going to reach some very harsh conclusions about Trump.
First, Trump is playing politics with American lives, and once again human beings are going to die because he is derelict in his oath of office to lead in such a way as to “promote the general welfare” of American citizens. Second, Trump is contradicting medical science because medical science is politically inconvenient for him. That represents another flagrant dereliction of duty on Trump’s part. Trump has turned the wearing or not wearing a mask into a wedge to drive between the political right and the political left. Not wearing a mask has become, thanks to Trump, a symbol of hatred as potent and as deadly as the Confederate flag.
This is classic Trump. He has painted himself into a corner and the only way out is to admit he was wrong. But he will never admit he’s wrong, not even if another hundred and forty thousand Americans must die to protect him. Instead he will allow them to die by turning the issue of not wearing a mask into a politically charged assertion of individual liberty. It’s a stupid as making not wearing a seatbelt about liberty, but far more deadly.
What Donald Trump has shown time and time again is that he simply doesn’t care who dies as long as the deaths of other people don’t get in the way of his ego or his re-election prospects. Just to be clear, you can die, your parents can die, your grandparents can die, your children can die, your best friend can die, and Trump is fine with that, just as long as he doesn’t have to admit he made a mistake.
I must now ask a direct question to my readers who are of a certain persistent persuasion: after all that you have seen that Donald Trump is, after all the evil he’s done, the coronavirus deaths he’s facilitated, the lies he’s told, the women and children he’s raped, the traitorous acts he’s committed, the murder of American troops he’s covered up for the sake of America’s Russian enemy, the children he’s caged — after all that, do you still believe Joe Biden is “just as bad” Trump because Biden doesn’t like the idea of a single payer healthcare plan? If you do then we don’t need you anymore. Go away.
I prefer a single payer healthcare plan myself. I think there’s a chance that Joe Biden can be persuaded that it’s the best way forward in the end. But the mere fact that he’s persuadable is an advantage. Trump isn’t persuadable about anything because never once in the 3 years and 180 egregious days that he’s been in office has he ever admitted he’s wrong about anything.
To the sane remainder of my readers, let’s get out in November and defeat this monster Trump definitively at the polls. Let’s elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. the 46th President of the United States and restore America to sanity. In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.