Reckless Former Guy! Coronavirus response must be fixed!

"Since this likely won’t be the last pandemic in Americans’ lifetimes, it’s important to review what went wrong and how to avoid those mistakes next time."

Follow. The. Science! Full Stop!

Clarion call to support science in the face of stupid Trumpzism!

Opinion editorial echo published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Top government health experts who worked under #FormerGuy Donald Trump are now acknowledging what has long been obvious: The failed Trumpzi administration egregiously dropped the ball on the pandemic — at a cost of many thousands of lives. 

Former White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx has gone so far as to say the majority of America’s almost 550,000 pandemic deaths could have been avoided. Examining that failure isn’t about assigning blame. Since this likely won’t be the last pandemic in Americans’ lifetimes, it’s important to review what went wrong and how to avoid those mistakes next time.

A year ago, Trump was routinely commandeering his administration’s daily coronavirus news briefings, generally making a bad situation worse. He downplayed the severity of the pandemic, refused to encourage mask-wearing and distancing, used this important platform to engage in petty political sniping and generally made clear to his millions of followers that he regarded scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci with suspicion. 

As (highly esteemed!) director of the National Institute and Infectious Diseases and America’s top infectious disease expert, Fauci’s insistence on conveying the dire situation with blunt honesty made him a national foil to Trump’s anti-science rhetoric.

Others among America’s experts had to walk a finer line with Trump — especially Birx, who unlike Fauci worked directly for the White House and could have been summarily fired at any time. Who could forget Birx’s hostage-video expression during the April 2020, news conference in which Trump suggested injecting coronavirus patients with disinfectant?

In a series of recent media interviews that have the feel of a rehabilitation tour, Birx has been critical of Trump in ways she wasn’t during his presidency. An assessment she gave CNN, for a special on Trump administration experts that aired Sunday, should haunt those who refused to take the pandemic seriously: “The first time, we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”

In the same special, Dr. Fauci described the “good cop, bad cop” roles he and Birx took on, to finesse the administration toward constructive action. “I was the bad cop,” he said.

Such head-games shouldn’t be necessary to focus a president during a national crisis, which stands as a lesson of the past year. Another is that presidents should lead by example where they can, as President Joe Biden has done on masks. Political leaders should let the experts convey information, stand behind them when they offer common-sense guidelines, and remind Americans that evolving knowledge about a threat doesn’t mean the experts are wrong — just that knowledge evolves.

If there are three more lessons the nation should have learned by now, it’s these: Trust the science. Trust the science. Trust. The. Science.