Another casualty of the coronavirus pandemic: Trust in government science

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Mon, 2020-10-12 11:44 — mike kraft

Another casualty of the coronavirus pandemic: Trust in government science Top doctors say a toxic political culture has become a public health hazard. Joel Achenbach, Laurie McGinley Washington Post

In another era, what happened Wednesday might have been viewed simply as good news. Two companies, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly, have independently developed therapeutic drugs, called monoclonal antibodies, that in preliminary testing appear to reduce symptoms for coronavirus patients. They applied for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

The positive development immediately became entangled in election-year politics, with President Trump repeatedly making false and exaggerated claims about the new therapeutics. He called them a cure, which they’re not. He said he was about to approve them — a premature promise given that the FDA’s career scientists are charged with reviewing the applications.

This has been the 2020 pattern: Politics has thoroughly contaminated the scientific process. The result has been an epidemic of distrust, which further undermines the nation’s already chaotic and ineffective response to the coronavirus. ...

Millions of Americans have embraced some version of a conspiracy theory that imagines the pandemic as a wildly exaggerated threat, or even an outright hoax, pushed by politically motivated scientists and the mainstream media to undermine the president. This is a form of science denial that leads many people to refuse to wear masks or engage in social distancing.

Scientists, meanwhile, worry that the politicization of the regulatory process could undermine the rollout of a vaccine even if it is approved by career professionals at the FDA. This is shaping up as a communications challenge for the government: Many people will want to know who, exactly, is greenlighting a vaccine. ...

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