by Larry Harris
The COVID-19 pandemic is being viewed from two sides in America: Health and economics.
Those leaders who follow advice from our health scientists are taking the approach to open business in a safe way with the understanding that premature gatherings of people will likely cause a relapse and increase in viral disease. On the other hand, those leaders who are focused on the economy or are afraid of losing an election are pushing us to open up.
Now, we read that the president and Fox News reporters are challenging our top scientific expert on infectious disease, trying to discredit Dr. Fauci. To do that is to discredit science itself.
Our president has stated that no one has ever seen something like this before. He is wrong. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) summarizes the most serious pandemic in recorded history as follows: “March 21, 2018:· In the United States, it (Spanish Flu) was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.”
Back then, our knowledge of viruses was less than it is today. However, in 1918, Gunnison, Colo., turned over its disease management to a doctor who told people to close businesses and stay home. They escaped the viral disease, but the rest of the world did not.
Nearly a century later, two coronavirus infections (MERS and SARS) were controlled by using advice from the scientific community to isolate people and prevent those viruses from spreading. So, when COVID-19 surfaced in December 2019, our disease experts knew how prevent the growth of another potential pandemic.
Unfortunately, our president was reluctant to listen to experts about the seriousness of the current viral disease and delayed taking their advice on what to do. Now the U.S. is leading the world in viral infections and deaths.
It is hard for me to understand the current groundswell of mistrust of scientists. Science-based facts result from an approach based on hypothesis, experimentation and conclusions. Scientific findings have been behind many of the advantages we enjoy today in health care and treatments, communication tools and safe foods and drugs, to name a few. Without scientific discovery and innovation, even our economy would be quite different today.
So where will we go if our elected leaders continue to disregard experts in science or in other disciplines? A successful elected official relies on advice from experts in their fields. Those “experts” should not be a group of journalists whose data is only their opinions. We need to get back to using facts to put some balance in how to run our country.
Larry Harris is a WVU professor of biochemistry, emeritus. He lives in Morgantown.
