US election 2020: Lancet lashes out at Trump’s ‘disastrous’ coronavirus response, urges vote for change
- The medical journal’s editorial said the US was experiencing a ‘continuing devaluation of science’
- Earlier, the New England Journal of Medicine slammed the US’s ‘astonishing’ failure to bring Covid-19 cases and deaths under control
It highlighted the country’s “fraying social safety net, continual erosion of trust in the public sector, the perceived diminished responsibility of the federal government, and political interference with crucial public health apparatus” – particularly in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
America is the world’s worst-hit country, with 8.94 million infections, and on Thursday it announced a record number of new coronavirus cases, topping the grim milestone of more than 90,000 diagnoses in 24 hours.
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The Lancet editorial said the US was experiencing a “continuing devaluation of science”, as well as a range of rights inequalities.
“With so much loss and still more at stake, the 2020 presidential election is the opportune moment for the American electorate to embrace change for the better,” it said.
It urged voters to “reject the stagnancy of complacency, to exchange a view bereft of intention with a vision of progress, and to rejoin the global community in the pursuit of a more equitable and sustainable future”.
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Several other major scientific publications have issued caustic assessments of Trump’s legacy on health and science in the weeks leading up to the November 3 polls.
Earlier this month, the journal Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific publications, said it was backing Biden for US president.
Its editorial said “no US president in recent history has so relentlessly attacked and undermined” vital institutions such as scientific agencies, the Department of Justice and the electoral system itself.
Earlier in the month, the New England Journal of Medicine slammed the US’s “astonishing” failure to bring Covid-19 cases and deaths under control, but stopped short of explicitly endorsing Biden in next month’s election.
But the election has caused other publications to break with tradition and endorse a White House candidate.
“We do not do this lightly,” the editors wrote in a sulphuric anti-Trump editorial published online for the magazine’s October issue.
“The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the US and its people – because he rejects evidence and science,” they wrote.