A World Gone Mad? The Rise of Antiscience Across the Right Wing.

What does it mean when your political philosophy depends on self-serving opinion at odds with fact? 

An article in Scientific American warns of the rise of "antiscience" birthed among America's radical right and now going global, a movement that's already claiming thousands of lives. 

Antiscience is the rejection of mainstream scientific views and methods or their replacement with unproven or deliberately misleading theories, often for nefarious and political gains. It targets prominent scientists and attempts to discredit them.

Now antiscience is causing mass deaths once again in this COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning in the spring of 2020, the Trump White House launched a coordinated disinformation campaign that dismissed the severity of the epidemic in the United States, attributed COVID deaths to other causes, claimed hospital admissions were due to a catch-up in elective surgeries, and asserted that ultimately that the epidemic would spontaneously evaporate. It also promoted hydroxychloroquine as a spectacular cure, while downplaying the importance of masks. Other authoritarian or populist regimes in Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines and Tanzania adopted some or all of these elements.

...During the summer of 2020, COVID-19 accelerated in states of the South as governors prematurely lifted restrictions to create a second and unnecessary wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Then following a large motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.Dak., a third surge unfolded in the fall in the Upper Midwest. A hallmark of both waves were thousands of individuals who tied their identity and political allegiance on the right to defying masks and social distancing. A nadir was a highly publicized ICU nurse who wept as she recounted the dying words of one of her patients who insisted COVID-19 was a hoax.

Now, a new test of defiance and simultaneous allegiance to the Republican Party has emerged in the form of resisting COVID-19 vaccines. At least three surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation, our study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, and the PBS News Hour/NPR/Marist poll each point to Republicans or white Republicans as a top vaccine-resistant group in America.


...The full antiscience agenda of the Republican Party has now gone beyond our national borders. In the summer of 2020, the language of the antiscience political right in America was front and center at antimask and antivaccine rallies in Berlin, London and Paris. In the Berlin rally, news outlets reported ties to QAnon and extremist groups. Adding to this toxic mix are emerging reports from U.S. and British intelligence that the Putin-led Russian government is working to destabilize democracies through elaborate programs of COVID-19 antivaccine and antiscience disinformation. Public refusal of COVID-19 vaccines now extends to India, Brazil, South Africa and many low- and middle-income countries.

...Facilitating the spread of COVID-19 is an expanded and globalizing antiscience movement that began modestly under a health freedom banner adopted by the Republican Tea Party in Texas. Thousands of deaths have so far resulted from antiscience, and this may only be the beginning as we are now seeing the impact on vaccine refusal across the U.S., Europe and the low- and middle-income countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Meanwhile the Fresh Prince of Mar-a-Lardo came out swinging today at Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx for their claims that he bungled America's Covid 19 response causing thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Trump falsely claims he was responsible for the rapid development of Covid vaccines (that resulted from mRNA research that was undertaken years before the pandemic) and that he succeeded (in what, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans?) by rejecting bad advice from Fauci and Birx. The point isn't that Trump lies. That's his prime directive. The point is that so many Americans are willing to believe people like Trump and the groundless conspiracies they promote.

This madness is driving even some experts to despair including the current director of the US Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Going "off script," Walensky spoke of a recurring feeling she has of "impending doom."  Despite the considerable efforts and success the Biden administration has had in getting vaccines into the arms of Americans, the numbers of new infections and hospital admissions are rising across the country.

Experts in Ontario are echoing Dr. Walensky's worst fears, warning that the Covid-19 pandemic in that province is "completely out of control."

A new briefing note from a panel of science experts advising the Ontario government on COVID-19 shows a province at a tipping point.

Variants that are more deadly are circulating widely, new daily infections have reached the same number at the height of the second wave, and the number of people hospitalized is now more than 20 per cent higher than at the start of the last provincewide lockdown, states an analysis from Ontario's COVID-19 science advisory table published on Monday night.

"Right now in Ontario, the pandemic is completely out of control," Dr. Peter Juni, the table's scientific director and a professor of medicine and epidemiology with the University of Toronto, said in an interview prior to the briefing note's publication.

Ontario needs to go on a war footing.

Juni said for Ontario, there is now "no way out" of the dire scenario that's set to unfold over the next few weeks without a widespread lockdown as well — coupled with other measures, including the province providing paid sick leave to essential workers, encouraging Ontarians to avoid movement between regions, and ensuring residents have access to lower-risk outdoor activities.

"There is no such thing as winning this race with just vaccinations," Juni stressed. "That's impossible."

As the sane among us queue up for vaccines the People's Vaccine Alliance claims that these 1st generation vaccines won't be a "one and done" solution. Instead we will need new vaccines, perhaps as soon as next year, to defend against coronavirus mutations or "variants." This was predicted several months ago by University of Alberta professor and 2020 Nobel laureate, Michael Houghton. Dr. Houghton was awarded the Nobel for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus in 1989. He also co-discovered the Hepatitis D genome in 1986. When it comes to viruses, Houghton and his colleagues are the 'pros from Dover.'