The president is out there giving false information every single day. Between him and the right-wing news media feedback loop, it’s bad enough that the epidemiologists have had to add his disinformation and propaganda into their models:
[B]asic questions leaders are struggling to answer: When can we safely lift these quarantines? How many people could die if we do it too early? Just how dangerous will this pandemic turn out to be? And what exactly should be our next step?
This is why epidemiology exists. Its practitioners use math and scientific principles to understand disease, project its consequences, and figure out ways to survive and overcome it. Their models are not meant to be crystal balls predicting exact numbers or dates. They forecast how diseases will spread under different conditions. And their models allow policymakers to foresee challenges, understand trend lines and make the best decisions for the public good.
But one factor many modelers failed to predict was how politicized their work would become in the era of President Trump, and how that in turn could affect their models.
In recent days, a growing contingent of Trump supporters have pushed the narrative that health experts are part of a deep-state plot to hurt Trump’s reelection efforts by damaging the economy and keeping the United States shut down as long as possible. Trump himself pushed this idea in the early days of the outbreak, calling warnings on coronavirus a kind of “hoax” meant to undermine him.
The notion is deeply troubling, say leading health experts, because what the country does next and how many people die depend largely on what evidence U.S. leaders and the public use to inform their decisions. Epidemiologists worry their research — intended to avert massive deaths in situations exactly like this pandemic — will be dismissed by federal leaders when it is needed most.
There is no doubt that Fox News is selling snake oil and happy talk, based upon the president’s daily Coronavirus Rally. All you have to do is watch it for a couple of hours to see how pernicious they really are.
And it isn’t just Fox and the president:
Those are just a few of the headlines circulating in the right-wing fever swamps. Trump voters are not getting accurate information and they are very likely to be spreading the virus all over the place. It would be one thing if they just infected those who choose to believe the president over common sense. But they are undoubtedly going to be infecting health care workers, other first responders and regular people who happen to be in their orbit.
It’s criminal…