Heeding Scientists’ Advice May Make Sense After All
A few weeks after Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis thumbed his nose at the scientific community by reopening his state’s beaches and nonessential businesses, and there had been no noticeable uptick in COVID-19 cases, the conservative press began its celebratory ridicule of those who still trust science. On May 20, 2020, The National Review wrote an article entitled: Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology?
A couple of months ago, the media, almost as one, decided that Governor Ron DeSantis was a public menace who was going to get Floridians killed with his lax response to the coronavirus crisis. In an interview, DeSantis says he was surprised at “how knee-jerk” the hostile coverage was, but he “also knew that none of these people knew anything about Florida at all, so I didn’t care what they were saying.”
From this article: Here Are All The States Where Coronavirus Cases Are Spiking
Texas and Florida—two of the first states to reopen—both hit new daily highs last week.
California also hit a record daily high last week, though one official attributed the spike to increased testing (Florida’s governor has also attributed his state’s spike to more testing).
Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Alaska have also seen surging case numbers over the last week.
On Friday, the CDC released new forecasts that singled out six states—Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, North Carolina, Utah and Vermont—where the coronavirus death toll is likely to rise over the next month.
Twenty-five years ago, none of this would have happened, because people both needed and trusted experts in various academic disciplines. Before the Internet, the United States didn’t have tens of millions of people who consider themselves constitutional scholars, gun safety experts, political advisors, climate scientists and epidemiologists. Now, anyone with a web browser can find thousands of articles that support whatever belief the self-described “expert” happens to believe–regardless of how bizarre and unsubstantiated.
Speaking for myself, I don’t have a belief system when it comes to matters of science. Some of the science I understand and some of it goes over my head, but I never offer an opinion on astrophysics or inorganic chemistry or molecular biology. I consider ourselves fortunate to be dealing with a pandemic now, rather than 150 years ago, before anyone had any conception of the germ theory of disease, and COVID-19 would have swept through the population like the bubonic plague did in 14th Century Europe.
