Joseph Sabino Mistick: Medicine and science, not politicians, will keep us safe

There must be a reckoning. For some public officials, it may be as soon as the next election, or it may come with the judgment of time and history. But sooner or later, those who have led us away from prevention and safety and toward calamity during the coronavirus pandemic will be called to account.

Some leaders are simply too weak to lead, unable to resist the understandable clamor of regular folks to get back to their everyday lives. Others make cold political decisions, like gamblers who bet with other people’s money, only this time they are betting with other people’s lives.

Call it misfeasance or malfeasance, failure born of incompetence or selfish intent. Either way, our private sense of right and wrong and our public sense of duty have both been violated. And, while this disease was sure to take some of us, respect for knowledge and science would save many of us.

But there is a shift. Public scorn for those who treated the coronavirus as a hoax is starting to come from every direction. Jennifer Rubin, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, wrote a piece last week with a forthright headline: “Here are the governors who hurt so many, so needlessly.”

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida had each crowed at the start of the pandemic that ignoring the health experts in favor of business as usual was good public policy. For a time, it played well politically.

But then luck ran out. Each of those states has lost control of the virus and deaths are soaring, hitting record numbers nearly every day, threatening the capacity of hospitals, destroying families and lives. As they scramble, the governors have lost their swagger and their legacies.

About all they can say is they were following the lead of their president, Donald Trump, a man who once seriously suggested that people could inject disinfectants to kill the virus. Trump continues to ridicule the advice of experts, sounding amazingly oblivious to a death toll of 135,000 so far.

Last week, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding to school districts if they do not reopen for classes. But that decision must turn on the health and safety of the children first, with medical experts and educators taking the lead, not a frightened politician.

And he continues to claim this global tragedy is a plot to make him look bad.

In his bullying tweet about schools, Trump said, “The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election.” For him, it is all about him.

But the opening of schools, just like the closing of businesses and assembly halls and beaches and bars, is a decision that must be based on the best medical and scientific advice in the world.

And there is one place for politics. When lives are needlessly lost, and as long as our children’s lives and those of their teachers and families are put at risk, all as part of a campaign strategy, there must be a political reckoning at the polls.