Joe Conason: Prescription For A Sick Country

https://www.nationalmemo.com/prescription-for-a-sick-country


Prescription For A Sick Country
Joe Conason
May 16 | 2020

snip//

Before Trump, it was unimaginable that a president of the United States would publicly cast doubt on the scientific data compiled by his own government, or publicly slur the scientists who devote their lives to protecting the public. But we have seen Trump do exactly those things, again and again, as he did this week when he attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's leading epidemiologist, and Dr. Rick Bright, its top vaccine specialist, a courageous dissenter Trump mocked as a "disgruntled" employee.

It was also unimaginable that any president — even one of the dimmer Oval Office lights — would say something as stupid as Trump's various absurd remarks about coronavirus testing. But we know that this president takes his advice from obsequious television personalities as intellectually vacuous as himself. He hears Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity say that the rise in coronavirus cases is a result of increased testing and confidently repeats that moronic theory.

(Aside from the logical fallacy, data shows that the opposite is true: New Zealand, which is one of the few places to successfully control the disease, has the highest ratio of tests performed to cases found. The Kiwis have conducted over 182 tests for every confirmed case.)

When America was truly great, as The Lancet suggests, our government rejected "America First" bluster and implemented policies that built the CDC into a truly robust and globally admired agency. Our political and religious leaders understood that we, our allies and even our adversaries shared the same interest in improving and protecting the health of the world's people. That bipartisan consensus endured even into the George W. Bush administration, which spent billions to stand up the president's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to hold back the AIDS pandemic.

We cannot rescue ourselves from the coronavirus, or protect our children and their children from future threats, without restoring the nation's commitment to scientific truth, public health and government integrity. And we cannot restore those elements of sanity until we remove the disturbed regime responsible for this ruin.

The message of The Lancet editors is simple: This November, voting is a choice of life or death.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.