Trump administration is crippling science.

[swansont]

10 minutes ago, dedo said:

Anyone's guess.

Not really, no. RFK’s confirmation will have predictable results - more people will get sick and die than would otherwise have happened. What’s unknown is the breadth and depth of the damage, but that depends on specific policies implemented or rescinded, and without that knowledge you can’t make an accurate assessment 

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, dedo said:

However, the point RP makes about bias in science is true.  Recently watched a YT video from an epidemiologist scholar who claims 500 scientific publications which is amazing.

Do you mean published 500 papers? Even so, it does not really matter, as it depends on their precise area of research.

 

1 hour ago, dedo said:

Then he said that scholars like himself, that understand literature (but have never treated a single covid patient) should be the ones to make policy.  Think about that.  Someone who believes a person who reads a lot, but never did something even once, should be in charge of those who both read and do.

That again depends. If you write papers, you have to do things before you publish them (unless he just wrote reviews, which would not be ideal). So again, credibility depends a lot on what work the person has done. Scholars who understand the literature are usually folks who contributed to it, not those that just read it.

1 hour ago, dedo said:

Will this admin. make some progress or make it worse?   We shall see.

They had already taken a stab on it and we have seen what happened. They managed to cripple the folks who knew (at least somewhat) what they were doing and as a results the US under Trump had the highest death rates among Western nations.

I vividly remember the op-ed they wrote how they did not dismantle the pandemic preparedness group, but just made it leaner and more efficient. Which obviously turned out to be a lie. Now, they are kicking out those who might be able to contribute knowledge. So we are left with morons and it is clear that health care will suffer. There are no two questions about it.

58 minutes ago, swansont said:

Not really, no. RFK’s confirmation will have predictable results - more people will get sick and die than would otherwise have happened. What’s unknown is the breadth and depth of the damage, but that depends on specific policies implemented or rescinded, and without that knowledge you can’t make an accurate assessment 

Also, it is almost inevitable that health care cost will increase. Vaccination and similar efforts are the most cost-effective medical intervention there is. Reducing it by even few points, and couple it with crippling information gathering and communication by the CDC means more stress on the system.

And this is only based what they are doing right now. They do have more plans according to their playbook. Now the criticism regarding lack of transparency form the Chinese seems more ironic than ever.