Trump and Biden, on Scientists and Doctors in the Time of the Plague
Both the President and the Past Vice President have oddities with Scientists and Doctors, which I will vent my opinions on.
Biden will be short. He really blew it when asked if he would shut down businesses again, and he said he will follow the scientists. We are electing government leaders to make the important decisions, weighing all factors, not just some scientists. He didn’t specify which science or scientists (infectious diseases), economists, social ecologists, would all be involved. Biden should have said that Doctors do not require a total shutdown if we practice social distancing, masks, and follow the CDC guidelines. People who don’t believe in all sciences still follow Doctors. The essence of the dangers of viruses are their continual evolution to spread. The essence of our body’s defenses against them are to evolve antigens to destroy specific ones.
Trump, on the other hand, views Doctors as just as corruptible as anybody else, if you find the right ones. And scientists are to be listened to, and then publicly belittled and denounced. Let’s recall Trump’s “medical” history. A friend of the family claimed that Trump had bone spurs (probably from being on the football and basketball teams) and couldn’t go to Vietnam. Trump got his old doctor to sign a health report that it turned out that Trump himself had written, and driven in his limousine for the doctor to come down and sign.
When Trump became President, he went to Walter Reed army hospital for his yearly physical. We have to remember, that they respect Trump both as the President and the Commander in Chief, whose orders they follow. That is how he found a doctor who said that he had great genes, and would live 200 years, except he was hinted to be in lousy physical condition. The doctor turned out to be in line for head of the Veterans Administration, until it was found that he had complaints running his own office.
The thing about Trump and his genes recurs, and is a bit racist, going back to Eugenics in the 20’s where it was used for racism and White superiority, and picked up by Hitler. Trump has said that he is an innate scientific genius, because his uncle was on the MIT engineering faculty. This proves dangerous for Americans, since Trump thinks that he knows better than scientists, and understands them, without really listening. He picks Coronavirus curve fitting that plunges to zero, with no more reason than wishful thinking, and people die because of it.
So it was not surprising this morning, to find that Trump’s new doctor, appearing with a double chorus line of 9 backups for effect, gave a press conference. He didn’t understand the political importance of whether Trump really knew 72 hours earlier that he had symptoms, and went to Minnesota and New Jersey and infected followers and donors. But Trump must have told him not to mention that he had been put on oxygen, a common hospital practice, since he didn’t want anybody to be “Panicked”, or really, to lose confidence that Trump was the “chosen one”. Later, somebody told some press that Trump had had a difficult time, which only leads to further speculation. But, Trump was the subject of continuous cable news, not Biden. That is what killed the Clinton candidacy four years ago. I wonder if Trump offered him the leadership of any government agency?
Anyway, Trump is getting excellent care, with three shifts of doctors, and all of the advanced and experimental medicines known. Unlike the pictures we have been seeing all year of patients in hallways, overworked nurses and doctors, and lack of PPE. They are also highly unlikely to tell him of any supply problems that they might have been having. Or, of patients they have been seeing who were misinformed about the seriousness of the Coronavirus. A Cornell examination of misinformation on the Coronavirus showed that 38% referred to Trump.
I almost left out Trump’s fake Coronavirus doctor, Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist. Not an allergy or viral doctor, or an epidemiologist. Who, unfortunately, believes in herd immunity, and will cough up any phlegm that Trump asks of him, without bearing any weight of mismanagement on his shoulders.
I also can’t leave out the continuing attempts by the administration to manage the public messaging of the CDC, FDA, and experts on the pandemic oversight board. Trump may have also slowed down the Coronavirus testing to lessen the number of detected cases.
It is actually quite sad, that Trump’s lack of backing or following social distancing and masking guidelines, leads to just the outbreaks that stop us from fully reopening our businesses and economy, like New York has now attained.
