Let's finally listen to those who understand nature best!
Every crisis produces its own heroes. In the current crisis, these are primarily nurses, paramedics, and doctors, who are working to the point of exhaustion, risking their own health to keep our healthcare system going, but also supermarket cashiers, pharmacists, truck and forklift drivers, mail carriers, and even teachers and educators, who are quickly switching to digital teaching so that our children can continue to learn the necessary material even during the crisis. And there is another group that is redeeming itself in this crisis: scientists, who for several years now have been confronted with a zeitgeist of "fake news," political lies, ideological fundamentalism, pseudo-religious legitimization of power, and dull simplification of the world.
In Germany, scientists and virologists Christian Drosten and Alexander Kekulé are now among the most popular public figures, and in the US, a veritable fan club has formed around physician, immunologist, and presidential advisor Anthony Fauci, whose statements seem unusually honest, factual, and truthful compared to those of his boss. The coronavirus has achieved something that previously seemed almost impossible: publicly exposing the intellectual dishonesty of right-wing populists.
The coronavirus reveals weaknesses in those who are supposedly strong
The populism of lies and anti-science rhetoric espoused by Donald Trump and Michael Pence, Jair Bolsonaro and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson, and their propaganda channels such as Fox News, is being confronted with the relentless reality of a global pandemic that Trump and Co. declared non-existent until it was simply no longer possible to do so. The denial of facts ("This is nothing more than a flu epidemic," Trump, Bolsonaro), the lies ("We have tests for everyone," Trump), ("Brazilians cannot be infected," "God is Brazilian. The cure is right here," Bolsonaro) and deliberate misdirection ("Anti-malaria pills cure coronavirus patients," Trump, Bolsonaro), ("The virus will one day disappear like a miracle," Trump), ("Cologne helps against coronavirus," Erdoğan) – all of this is mercilessly exposed in its untruthful core by the dynamics of the coronavirus crisis. Donald Trump's previous preference for leading the US through his hunches and what he considers to be his infallible gut feeling, rather than through the recognition of facts and scientific evidence, is being exposed in its fundamental weakness by the coronavirus. The destructive power of this virus clearly reveals the failures of the populist right as well as its prejudices against scientific findings. If Trump had only listened to scientists and public health experts, he could have averted the disaster for his country or at least made it much less severe.
Right-wing populists, with their reckless disregard for scientific evidence, e.g., on climate change or the dangers of environmental destruction, and generally for scientific findings that contradict their belief and value systems, do not adhere to scientific advice when it comes to the dynamics of a pandemic, even if it is as simple as the mathematics of exponential growth. The government, especially in the US, had been warned: after the Ebola epidemic in 2014, the Obama administration was so afraid of the dangers of another epidemic that it introduced several innovations to prepare the nation for a possible pandemic based on the latest scientific findings. However, every element of these efforts was disregarded, scaled back, or completely discontinued by the Trump administration. Yet scientists knew a surprising amount about the virus and its dangers at a surprisingly early stage: on January 5, scientists in Shanghai had identified the complete virus genome from an infected patient and immediately reported it to GenBank, the genetic sequencing database of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). By early February, scientists knew that COVID-19 was easily transmitted between individuals and that it came with a relatively high mortality rate, especially among older and vulnerable people. Instead of listening to the scientists, Trump and his cohorts decided to dismiss them and resort to the tried-and-true methods of nepotism, tasking laypeople close to him with crafting a response to the looming pandemic: Vice President Mike Pence, who still believes in creationism and vehemently rejects the theory of evolution, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a real estate speculator with no knowledge of medical and epidemiological issues, are now supposed to fix it.
The scientific truth
Now, harsh reality is finally catching up with all the lies, dogmas, and scientific skepticism of the populists. While China, Korea, and many European countries reacted much earlier (though perhaps still not early enough) and are slowly seeing the first signs of success from their actions, the growth in coronavirus cases is particularly high in the US, Turkey, and Brazil (where cases are growing most rapidly among countries in the southern hemisphere), even though they should have been warned relatively early on by the earlier developments in other countries. One could say that scientific truth has struck back in a brutal way.
Now, the coronavirus crisis will be over in the foreseeable future. But what about the long-term, even more far-reaching problems that scientists are warning us about and that science skeptics like Trump and Bolsonaro reject in terms of their urgency or even existence? The reaction of Trump, Bolsonaro, and their ilk to the coronavirus crisis is consistent with their reaction to the even greater climate crisis. Even the most die-hard of their voters and supporters should now realize how flimsy the foundation of their anti-scientific ideology is. In addition, scientists have long established a link between the COVID-19 virus and our destruction of tropical rainforests. The COVID-19 virus, as well as the far more dangerous viruses Ebola, HIV, Marburg fever, bird flu, MERS, Zika, and Nipah, are examples of animal diseases, known as zoonoses, that have jumped from wild animals to humans in recent decades. The shrinking habitat of animals and environmental destruction greatly facilitate this transition. Bats in particular are being driven out of their natural habitat in the jungle and closer to humans by the restriction of their natural habitat. And bats carry a pool of at least 3200 different coronaviruses! According to current knowledge, the coronavirus pandemic cannot be directly attributed to deforestation of the rainforest, and a direct link to bats has not been conclusively proven (the virus probably jumped to humans via an intermediate host at a wildlife market in Wuhan. This intermediate host, perhaps a small mammal, may have been infected by a bat), but virologists have long been clear: the combination of a wide range of wild animals with a high prevalence of viruses and the reckless reduction of their habitat by humans makes Southeast Asia in particular a hotspot for the transmission of dangerous viruses to humans. Scientists are called upon to analyze the potential danger of these viruses more closely and to prepare for possible transmission to humans. However, business and politics also have a responsibility to put a stop to this excessive destruction of the environment. Simple steps are also necessary, such as closing wildlife markets, as has already happened in China. The coronavirus crisis and the political response to it show all too clearly that our societies are capable of taking action in the face of crises. This insight should also help us in the climate crisis.
We should therefore also see the current coronavirus crisis as an opportunity: on the one hand, as an opportunity to identify the necessary steps to be prepared for future viruses that could be even more dangerous. On the other hand, we should keep reminding ourselves of the image of the naked helplessness of right-wing populists in the coronavirus crisis when debating the climate crisis. Their fight against science, their shameless lies, and their stubborn rejection of empirical evidence have written an inglorious chapter. We should not let them continue this fight, because we will all be the losers in this fight.
About Lars Jaeger
Lars Jaeger studied physics, mathematics, philosophy, and history and spent several years researching quantum physics and chaos theory. He lives near Zurich, where he has built up two companies of his own that advise institutional financial investors, while also maintaining regular blogs on science and current affairs. He also teaches at the European Business School in the Rheingau, among other places. His enthusiasm for science and philosophy has never left him. His thinking and writing repeatedly revolve around the influence of science on our thinking and lives. In September 2019, his latest book, "Mehr Zukunft wagen!" (Dare to embrace the future!), was published by Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
