Silencing scientists, doctors in the name of ‘freedom’

At bottom, Trumpism is about resentment. In large part, it’s the lower half of the high school class rebelling against the honor students: the ones with all the fancy degrees who can’t change a tire. The girly men and the homely women. The ones who think they’re better than you.

So it should come as no surprise to learn that only a bare majority of Republicans told a Politico poll that they think the COVID vaccine is safe and effective — 52%, to be precise. Fully 48% believe that it’s dangerous and useless. Unsurprising, but shocking nevertheless.

Nationwide, the numbers are pro-vaccine by 71 to 29, because 91% of Democrats and 69% of Independents say they trust medical science. Alas, that’s not good enough for herd immunity.

It’s also no surprise that yet another wave of COVID infections is building nationwide. Florida — whose shamelessly ambitious governor, Ron DeSantis, has advised his constituents to avoid the new COVID-19 boosters — now leads the nation in COVID hospitalizations.

As the Miami Herald editorialized, “Florida’s extremism has come home to roost. … Floridians have paid the price for the ignorance DeSantis has labeled ‘freedom.’”

Nationally, a study by the American Medical Association determined that “the excess [COVID] death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters.”

They are literally being deceived to death.

Florida also leads the nation in school book banning. Remember when every good Republican opposed “cancel culture” — puritanical leftist students shouting down speakers they didn’t want to hear? Well, that was then.

Now, when Moms For Liberty bans books, they call that freedom, too.

Meanwhile, as day follows night, congressional Republicans mean to shut down any and all efforts by government scientists — pointy-headed intellectuals, every one, as Alabama Gov. George Wallace used to say — to combat political and medical disinformation. Led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, right-wing politicians are filing lawsuits and issuing congressional subpoenas to prevent scientists from combatting inaccurate and/or malicious rumors on places like Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter).

The allegation is that the Biden administration has formed an unholy alliance with Big Tech to benefit Big Pharma by suppressing free speech. See, if your wacky brother-in-law or Robert F. Kennedy claims that COVID vaccines cause impotence or make the family cat determined to kill you in your sleep, then they have a First Amendment right not to be contradicted by some smug government bureaucrat at the National Institutes of Health.

The most significant effort so far has been a lawsuit known as Missouri v. Biden, now before the Supreme Court. A ruling by the reliably right-wing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the White House and the FBI may have violated the First Amendment by improperly urging tech companies to remove inaccurate posts on the coronavirus and the 2020 presidential election.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has charged that the federal government “silenced” information because “it didn’t fit their narrative.”

Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, whose legal foundation is involved in another conspiracy-related lawsuit, vowed in a statement to defeat something he calls “the censorship-industrial complex that is crushing freedom and promoting dangerous conspiracy theories about Americans who dare to question government dogma.”

Partly in response to all of this, the NIH has frozen funding for a $150 million program to advance the communication of medical information. NIH also sent a memo to employees warning them not to contact Facebook et. al. about nonsensical social media posts.

“In the name of protecting free speech, the scientific community is not allowed to speak,” health communications researcher Dean Schillinger told the Post. “Science is being halted in its tracks.”

Russian and Chinese hackers, meanwhile, sources of a lot of malicious disinformation, can operate with a free hand.

The bitter irony is that all this is happening because President Donald Trump saw the pandemic as a threat to his popularity. Instead of stressing the one good thing his administration did — providing funding for vaccine research — he appeared to panic, touting miracle cures (bleach, Ivermectin, etc.) and repeatedly blaming China for the virus.

Public confusion was certain to follow.

So by all means, let’s not trust these credentialed elitists with their graduate degrees and years of research. Let’s go with the charismatic dunce who cheated his way through high school and can barely speak in complete sentences.

But then, it’s pretty much the same with any complex challenge with the potential to raise billionaires’ taxes. Until quite recently, Republican politicians spoke of global climate change as a ridiculous myth that pedantic dork Al Gore was peddling in service of a One World Government. Every snowstorm was held up as proof that he was deluded.

Now that potentially catastrophic planetary warming can no longer be denied, the GOP party line has shifted. Now the line is, “Climate is always changing, and there’s nothing mere humans can do about it.”

We’ll just have to ride it out on our yachts.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000).