Do you even believe in science, bro? (#6)
Contrary to popular belief, anti-science behavior isn't just for right-wingers.
Happy Tuesday, everyone!
Before we get into this week’s meat, I’d like to direct your attention to a number of organizations supporting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
Hate crimes against AAPIs have worsened as shown by the latest bout of reported attacks on both coasts — Vicha Ratanapakdee, a “nearly blind” 84-year-old Thai grandfather, was shoved so hard against the pavement by his attacker that he died of his injuries; Noel Quintana, a 61-year-old Filipino man, was slashed across the face during an attack on the New York City subway earlier this month.
These attacks were thought to be fueled by xenophobia against Asians, particularly those of Chinese descent, after the COVID-19 outbreak, due to racist language related to discussions around China and the coronavirus. There were more than 2,100 reported hate incidents targeting AAPIs between March and June of 2020 alone.
Valentine’s Day may have come and gone but it’s never a wrong time to contribute your support to organizations advocating for AAPI communities. Find out where to share the love here. Also, if you want to learn how to safely de-escalate public harassment situations, Hollaback! has a breadth of super helpful resources.
Returning to our regular programming, a New York Times article published earlier this month reported that nine of New York’s top public health officials have resigned since late summer. Most of them resigned due to conflict with the governor’s office in its management of the pandemic.
And New York isn’t the only state that’s had in-fighting between government officials and public health experts. According to a joint investigation by the Associated Press and Kaiser Health News, at least 181 state and local public health leaders have either resigned, retired, or been fired across 38 states since April. Here’s a visual map of where and how many health experts have peaced-out of their public posts.
Normally, you wouldn’t think of a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic as a political issue, but here it is. As National Association of County and City Health Officials CEO Lori Tremmel Freeman described the situation: “It’s not a health divide; it’s a political divide.” Even more surprising is that such political divides over the pandemic have become an issue in both red and blue states.
Beginning with the so-called “mask wars,” the pandemic is generally viewed as having split the American public neatly down the middle — conservatives versus liberals. The dominant view on the left has been that MAGA supporters, obsessed with a distorted idea of American liberty, are losing their minds because they believe wearing a piece of cloth on their face restricts their God-given freedom. They don’t believe in science.
There’s a kernel of truth to this; who could forget the viral videos of anti-maskers screaming about Democratic propaganda in the middle of Trader Joe’s after a poor store employee tells them store policy requires customers to wear face masks? However, reports of fractures between public health experts and government officials — some in blue states — show that anti-science isn’t an exclusively conservative thing.
In California, where a lot of chaotic pandemic management has been happening, Department of Public Health Director Dr. Sonia Angell resigned after a tech glitch that caused an undercounting of the state’s infection numbers, while public health experts across the state had already been resigning in droves. In Colorado, at least seven top local health officials have retired, resigned, or been fired since the pandemic began, including the state’s top COVID-19 testing guru. Washington, which is part of the West Coast’s “blue wall,” also saw a number of top health experts across counties who either left or were pushed out of their posts.
No matter the dominant politics of their state, public health officials across the country have been sidelined, demeaned, and even received death threats because people don’t like being restricted, even if it’s for the sake of public health.
While a big part of the mass exodus has been the public’s aversion against pandemic protocols, serving amid a deadly pandemic is made even more challenging when experts have no strong support from their local governments. New York Gov. Cuomo perfectly exemplifies this disdain for science experts within the government’s own agencies.
“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts. Because I don’t.” — Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Um, what?? It’s an incredible confession that unwittingly speaks to the country’s growing problem of anti-science, even among allegedly left-leaning politicians. Cuomo doesn’t outright say that he doesn’t believe in science, but how else are we supposed to take his words when he admits that he doesn’t trust scientists?
You could argue that it’s more about Cuomo’s ego and politics. After all, this is the guy who wrote an entire book about how amazingly he managed New York’s pandemic response — while the pandemic is still going on!! (also, last I checked, NY still has the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the entire U.S.)
Cuomo’s not explicitly arguing against scientific facts but he isn’t embracing experts’ science-based recommendations, either. Why? Because they aren’t convenient to his political interests. That is anti-science behavior.
According to the NYT report, Cuomo sidelined public health experts to push policies on his own. It’s gotten to a point where experts don’t find out about state protocols until they’re announced in Cuomo’s press briefings, and are then forced to *adjust their safety recommendations* to align with Cuomo’s policies when — hello — it should be the other way around. For Valentine’s Day weekend, the governor allowed indoor restaurant dining to return to 25 percent (!) capacity, because nothing says romance like helping to spread a deadly virus together<3
Now, the state is struggling to fix its messy vaccination rollout and the governor is embroiled in what feels like an insidious cover-up over NY’s high number of nursing home deaths.
Then, there are the ways that the public is more explicitly anti-science. Like the fact that one-third of U.S. adults say they’re still skeptical about the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s an astonishingly high anti-vaccine sentiment for a First World country.
Interestingly, researchers have found growing anti-vaccine sentiments in developed countries while public confidence in vaccines has been consistent in countries that still struggle with treatable, transmittable diseases. It’s all incredibly ironic; countries where treatable diseases have been contained thanks to strong vaccinations are now full of people who don’t think they need vaccines because the need has been lessened by easy access to vaccines (some countries are trying to combat such vaccine skepticism through out-of-the-box campaigns like Japan and its cartoon dog chatbot).
But casual anti-science attitudes aren’t restricted to politicians or conservative folks. Liberal-leaning people will adhere to safety protocols but then ignore them when the rules don’t suit them, too. We see it every damn holiday. Even if you aren’t screaming about face masks and liberty, cherry-picking health protocols is still anti-science behavior because it’s based on preference, not science-based reasoning.
I am of course not referring to folks who *cannot afford* to adhere to strict pandemic protocols due to their unstable financial standing or their job. When it comes to vaccines, people from marginalized backgrounds that have historically been abused by this country’s medical experts also tend to have higher distrust in the government, which sometimes leads to a harder time accepting new vaccines.
In these difficult situations, people are forced toward choices that could potentially put them at risk due to government incompetence — if the government gave people enough financial aid and did proper community outreach, people wouldn’t be making dangerous decisions.
What I’m talking about, though, aren’t people in situations of adversity. I’m talking about those able to comfortably stay quarantined but who go out of their way to shrug off safety protocols simply because they’re bored or don’t like it, which is a symptom of entitlement that evidently transcends party lines.
When officials are also anti-science in their governance to gain political brownie points, it breathes anti-science culture into the public-facing system. As a result, we get a never-ending pandemic because, in spite of health experts, people just do what they want.
Another Big Thing that happened last week was, of course, Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. As predicted, the trial was a hot mess. Not because of the legal complexities but mostly because of Trump’s defense team, who opened the trial with a weird monologue that mentioned old-timey records, ancient Greek, and suggested that, actually, the election wasn’t fraudulent as their client had claimed?
The defense was bad enough that Trump — still banned from Twitter and Facebook — had a meltdown over it offline.
If you didn’t have the energy to keep up with the shenanigans last week, Bess Levin at Vanity Fair has a series of hilarious round-up articles on the entire mess.
Unfortunately, as many had expected, Trump was acquitted of the charges that the ex-POTUS incited the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. Impeachment managers actually won the majority of the Senate vote (all 50 Democratic senators + seven Republicans and independents), but it fell short of the two-thirds majority of 67 votes required under the Constitution.
This means that Trump is legally allowed to run for re-election in the future and will continue to enjoy sweet perks like life-long government-funded Secret Service security, and a six-figure pension. Bad news aside, there were some positive moments from the trial, such as the public’s introduction to “breakout stars” U.S. House Rep. Joe Neguse (CO-D), the son of Eritrean refugees and the youngest impeachment manager ever, and U.S. Delegate Stacey Plaskett (VI-D), the first delegate from a U.S. territory to act as an impeachment manager. These two will be among the ones to watch.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
🔥 After the Indian government criticized public support for the farmers’ protests from international celebrities like Rihanna, officials are now arresting local activists for distributing digital “toolkits” to help keep the movement alive. | Deutsche Welle
🔥 In Brazil, environmental activists are fighting to secure legal justice for colleagues who were murdered while defending their endangered lands. So far, there have been zero convictions to 31 such murder cases that took place in 2019. | Mongabay
🔥 Yoshiro Mori, president of Tokyo’s Olympics organizing committee, will reportedly step down from his role following the controversy over sexist remarks he made about women. I can’t believe we’re even discussing an international sporting event in the middle of a global pandemic but here we are. | ESPN
🔥 More than 4 million Texans are still without power since the massive blackouts yesterday. It’s a hazardous situation when the state’s temperatures have reached record-lows which its power infrastructure wasn’t made to withstand. | Earther
🔥 The venn diagram between white supremacists who stormed the Capitol and known anti-abortionists is a full circle, according to pro-choice activists. | Prism
🔥 After researchers revamped the famous 1960s marshmallow test, they found that for children from poorer backgrounds, eating the marshmallow right in front of them may be the wiser choice in the long run. | The Atlantic
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If you want more, check out past issues of The P Word, like issue #5 where I dove into how the trade wars over tea led to Hong Kong’s strange non-sovereign status, or issue #2 where I looked at the (extremely) Old Guard serving in U.S. Congress.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! Don’t forget to tell your saucy grandmother about it, please, and leave any feedback or thoughts in the comments section on the original Substack post.
Stay golden,
Natasha