My father was born in 1927 in pre-Hitler Germany. In 1939, when he was 12, he decided he wanted to be a physicist.[1] I always found his choice of profession to be fascinating, because physics is probably the least political choice he could have made. Within physics he found a safe bubble where the world made sense. The “laws” of physics are what they are, without any political aspect to them.[2] In fact, as I wrote back in 2016 when he passed away, physics was a “venue” that allowed him to befriend a survivor of the Krakow ghetto, where both men could pursue their common search for “objective” truths.[3]
Cut to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump, as many of you know, is very proud of his uncle, Dr. John G. Trump, formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And Indeed, Dr. Trump had a rather impressive career, which included receiving the National Medal of Science, developing rotational radiation therapy, and helping to develop one of the first million-volt X-ray generators.
The Donald frequently cites his uncle as proof that he comes from a family with very “intelligent” genes.
Dr. Trump must be rolling over in his grave these days.
His nephew, our President of the United States, has claimed all of the following during his presidency, among other things:
- That windmills cause cancer.
- That “raking” forests would prevent forest fires and that trees can spontaneously combust.
- That one could use a nuclear bomb to defuse a hurricane.
- The ingesting cleaning supplies Clorox could cure the Coronavirus.
Anyone who has graduated from high school should be more scientifically literate than the Donald has proven himself to be.
More recently, the Donald has, of course, argued with his own CDC about when a Covid vaccine is likely to be available. The Donald keeps trying to convince us that a vaccine will be ready for mass distribution right before the November 3rd election.
He couldn’t even be any more obvious if he tried.
This is, of course, the same man who told Bob Woodward as early as February 7th that he knew the virus was airborne and much more dangerous than the flu, while he was lying to us same exactly the opposite thing.
This is the same man who tried to open the United States back up at a point in time when he knew clearly that we were not ready.
And now he’s arguing with his CDC Director, Robert Redfield, who (like just about every other expert) has opined that one (or more) vaccines will probably be ready for mass distribution to the general public by the summer of 2021.
[1] Hitler came to power in 1933, and the Second World War is generally considered to have begun on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
[2] This is less true, for example, in biology, where scientific racism has been used to justify different treatment of different races.
