American Science Strategy Mess: COVID-19 Fail – Space Science … ?
The crisis that shocked the world: America’s response to the coronavirus, Washington Post
“Six months after the coronavirus appeared in America, the nation has failed spectacularly to contain it. The country’s ineffective response has shocked observers around the planet. Many countries have rigorously driven infection rates nearly to zero. In the United States, coronavirus transmission is out of control. The national response is fragmented, shot through with political rancor and culture-war divisiveness. Testing shortcomings that revealed themselves in March have become acute in July, with week-long waits for results leaving the country blind to real-time virus spread and rendering contact tracing nearly irrelevant.”
Keith’s note: And the same White House that has put 328.2 million Americans at risk of serious illness and death as a direct result of its incompetent and woefully ignorant understanding of basic Biology wants to go back to the Moon, to do “science” there, etc. How can we lead in space when we have failed so spectacularly on Earth?
Yes, you detect blatant editorial bias. Get used to it.
Well having never believed that we were going to get to the moon via the NASA program, I suspect we’ll just have to wait for Elon (or Jeff) to get us up there. Private industry largely hasnt entered the “reality-free-zone” that seems to have enveloped government at all levels in the US.
It’s a national embarrassment, and that’s not even that important given how serious it is.
IMHO, bias implies a tilt in an odd direction. Seems pretty straight to me.
Right on target, yet often a missed connection. Anti-scientific and historical anti-intellectualism in the US goes hand in hand with policies leaning right, and this administration has turned disrespect for any expert, facts, and science into a selling point. As NASA leadership and too many others tune out to stay bipartisan here or apolitical there, thinking the climate science probe is safe anyway due to the House, and just glad the budgets continue to trend up, it’s worth remembering what’s happening over in state, or interior, or education or HHS and the CDC.
Once policy merely becomes politics, science is an annoyance, and all rhyme and reason has become a dictate from some stakeholder, you get incompetence in managing a public health crisis, programs like SLS and Orion, a blind eye to climate change, and worse. It’s damage done and downhill from there.
And who was for the ‘science’ of eugenics and who against it early last century? The ‘science’ of race ranking the previous century? The dismissal of nuclear power based on ignorance and fear-mongering?
Science is a tool or a toy (GKC). How it is treated/employed belongs to a realm of decision-making higher than itself. Differing degrees of its use, abuse, and dismissal have been distributed across persons of all political stripes ever since science was ‘science’.
Nuclear power hasn’t been dismissed because of ignorance or fearmongering. It’s been dismissed because it’s too expensive. This is what killed the first nuclear buildout, and it’s what killed the latest attempt at a nuclear renaissance. And now it’s too late for nuclear. The CO2-free competition is now cheaper and on a much more aggressive experience curve.
The hardnosed, reality-based take on energy would have been much more skeptical of nuclear, even from the beginning. It was realized that nuclear power would, at best, be only slightly cheaper than power from a coal plant, and that’s only if everything worked out perfectly (which it never does).
Also, if your whataboutism requires you go back a century for an example, please just stop.
There’s very little connection between failure in one area of science or engineering and success in another area of science or engineering. For example just because the Soviet made mistake in supporting Lysenkoism did not prevent them from launching Sputnik.
And it is questionable whether the US response to Covid-19 can be classified as “failed spectacularly”, because it lacks context of history. The 1968 flu pandemic killed 116,000 Americans among a population of 200 million, that’s equivalent to 191,000 deaths today, quite a bit higher than the # of deaths caused by Covid-19 so far, do you hear the 1968 flu pandemic described as “the nation has failed spectacularly”?
And of course the 1968 flu pandemic did not prevent the US from landing and doing science on the Moon. So yes, it is entirely possible to lead in space while having a higher death toll during pandemic (The US has 10% of the total deaths from 1968 flu pandemic, while the US population was only 5.6% of the world population back then).
With a historical perspective, one has to wonder how much blame we can put on the current administration with regard to Covid-19. It seems to me the US has always had difficulty in terms of pandemic response, probably due to the non-conformity in the American psyche. This lack of conformity to authority is actually very helpful in terms of science and engineering, as long as it is supported by evidence. For example if Elon Musk had listened to experts in 2002, there wouldn’t be Tesla or SpaceX today, it is precisely because he trusts his own judgement more than experts that allowed him to revolutionize rocketry and car manufacturing.
However, as we can see this trait also has a downside, in that it makes it harder to get a highly uniform response during a pandemic. This is nothing to be ashamed of, just because you got a D in biology doesn’t mean you couldn’t get A+ in physics, everybody has strengths and weaknesses, same for countries, one failure does not define a person or a nation.
Huh? Let me read that again. HUH? Science is science. If you make policy that is ignorant and devoid of scientific credibility please tell me how you can be trusted to make other, less critical decision on science policy. Get back to me on that.
Yes, you really need to base decisions on the scientific evidence. If American leaders had continued to support the building of nuclear power plants in the 1970’s instead of giving in to the anti-science hysteria of the environmentalists global CO2 would be in the low 300 ppm today. Elected leaders from both of the political parties should respect the opinions of scientists. The problem is that the political leaders of both parties reject the science that opposes their political views (anti-climate change, anti-GMO, anti-masks, anti-nuke) instead of letting science guide their political views.
I think the problem is also about how scientific advice is reported. The advice about COVID-19 and wearing masks was not totally consistent from the start, and has only started converging in the past month or two. And by that, I don’t mean all the political nonsense. The WHO, CDC, etc. were saying things like yes, only for health care workers treating COVID patients, yes but only when social distancing isn’t possible, yes but in addition to not instead of social distancing, etc.
The problem is that they were providing advice about what was _probably_ best based on the best information they had _at_the_time_. But the press reports often left out the “probably” and the fact that the current information was limited. (Or, in some cases, the experts left out the qualifiers, for fear people would ignore waffling advice full of qualifiers.) You can’t expect those medical experts to do more than say what is most likely to be a good idea based on the information they have. But then, when new information comes along the advice will naturally change. If the advice is provided without qualifications, then can hurt public acceptance of scientific advice. If things are presented as absolute fact and then turn out not to be, it can create the impression that the experts don’t really know what they’re talking about.
Both parties put science on the back burner behind politics, Keith. I won’t elaborate on that here though.
Both parties have tolerated the space waste that all of us decry here.
Both parties have neglected NASA in it’s funding and tried to legislate mission designs.
Both parties contain a MAJORITY of constituents who are TOTALLY CLUELESS about what is going on in space industry, technology, and Science.
So the things I read here cross party lines all the time…then why not the political benefits of an effort like Artemis?
(Sarcasm) That’s why history must be exponged-it’s messy…
>US has always had difficulty in terms of pandemic response
I think the core problem is it immediately took on political perspective. OK, all crisis are political in nature but this took it to a whole different level such as wearing or not wearing a mask became a political statement. A leader should know when he is not an expert and consult with experts. That leader may need to balance other issues but becoming epidemiologist by way of internet saying economy is more important. To me that is reckless. When hospitals get overloaded rendering them useless to other needs, or people avoiding activities when they see the fatalities racking up… that can be damaging to the economy if not more.
Some hoax.