This is how Biden and Trump collided on health in final debate 4:14
(CNN Spanish) -
The electoral campaign in the United States is about to end.
The candidates, President Donald Trump, for the Republicans, and former Vice President Joe Biden, for the Democrats, have had conflicting positions on the coronavirus and science.
In this episode, Dr. Elmer Huerta recounts what both politicians have said about the pandemic.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Hi.
I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information on the new coronavirus.
Information that we hope will be useful to take care of your health and that of your family.
Today we will see what is the attitude of the candidates for the US presidency regarding covid-19 and science in general.
The United States is on the eve of a very important presidential election.
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On Tuesday, November 3, current President Donald Trump for the Republican Party, - seeking to be re-elected - and former Vice President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party face, and their attitudes regarding the covid-19 and science in general are not they may be more different.
Trump and his position on science
Overall, as a recent article in the journal Nature summarizes, President Trump's words and actions have severely harmed science.
Since his time as a candidate, when in September 2015 he said that childhood vaccines caused autism, Mr. Trump had already emerged as a person with the wrong positions on science.
Also during that campaign, Trump said that climate change was a lie, and that one of the first things he would do if he became president would be to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.
In June 2017, President Trump announced the withdrawal, a 12-month process that formally began in November 2019.
Trump and global warming
This decision has been considered by experts as a severe outrage to the control of the planet's climate, and a damage that - although it is true can be remedied - has delayed international efforts to reduce climate change.
Not content with that, Trump began to systematically dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, the most important of which are aimed at regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and the cars.
As proof of the foolishness of those decisions, the Nature article cites, the same industry - automakers Honda and Ford and oil companies Exxon Mobil and BP - criticized those regulations.
"The Trump era has really been a terrible, terrible time for this planet," Leah Stokes, a climate policy researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Nature.
Trump and his position on the coronavirus
Another major outrage on science, says Nature magazine, was the announcement of the United States' withdrawal from the World Health Organization in May.
With regard to the management of the pandemic, there have been many actions against science that Mr. Trump has taken.
The most shocking is that on February 7, when 12 cases of covid-19 had just been found in the United States, Mr. Trump told journalist Bob Woodward that the new coronavirus was five times more lethal than the strongest virus of the flu.
Trump admits he downplayed covid-19 5:25
"This is deadly," Trump said in the taped interview that was released only in September.
Despite having that information, Trump publicly downplayed the pandemic, saying it was just like the flu and that it was going to disappear as if by magic.
In another taped statement to Woodward, Trump admitted that he had downplayed the pandemic, according to him, so as not to worry the American people.
Other confrontational actions against science include withdrawing responsibility for handling pandemic data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), its interference with FDA decisions, and Seven former directors of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a letter denouncing that Trump was undermining the credibility of that vital health agency.
The politicization of the coronavirus
Also included in that list are his media support for hydroxychloroquine, his statements of using disinfectants or internal ultraviolet light lamps to eliminate the virus, his constant refusal and criticism of wearing masks and ignoring physical distancing, promoting his manifestations of reelection campaign without masks, without physical distancing in closed and open spaces.
Also his lack of respect for scientists, neglecting America's leading infectious disease experts, whom he called "idiots" at a campaign rally.
The result of these actions is devastating.
The US, an international power with vast scientific and economic resources, has experienced, as of November 1, more than 9 million cases of covid-19 and its death toll has exceeded 230,000, more than any other nation, and a figure that represents a fifth of the total death toll worldwide, although the United States only has 4% of the planet's population.
While it is true that it is difficult to attribute all the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic to Mr. Trump and his government, a study by Columbia University concluded that having faced the pandemic with greater seriousness and coordination, until May —— date of the publication of the study -, around 35,000 lives could have been saved, more than half the death toll as of May 3.
Biden's stance on science
On Mr. Biden's position on science, the records indicate that he has always been respectful of science.
During his time as a senator from 1973 to 2009, he voted for several bills aimed at expanding the coverage and access of Americans to health care, and supported some funding for federal health care programs and public health initiatives.
His main contributions, however, were made during his vice presidency when he focused on reforming the U.S. healthcare system and in 2015, when his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer, Biden promoted an ambitious program called Moonshot o Shot to the Moon, which was approved in the Senate in December 2016, with a budget of more than US $ 6,000 million.
Biden privately led the initiative after leaving office until 2019.
With regards to the pandemic, Mr. Biden has scrupulously adhered to the CDC regulations of respecting physical distance, and has not held mass campaign rallies like Mr. Trump's.
With regard to the masks, he has used them in all public events, coming to be ridiculed for that by President Trump.
If elected, your plan includes a deep respect for the provisions that scientific advisers can provide.
Undoubtedly, in these elections among the many issues that have to do with the daily lives of Americans, science and health will also be at stake, with two candidates with very different positions on science and medicine.
Do you have questions about the coronavirus?
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes.
You can find me at @DrHuerta.
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Thanks for your attention.
If you have any questions you can send them to Dr. Elmer Huerta via Twitter. You can also head over to CNNE.com/coronaviruspodcast for all episodes of our “Coronavirus: Reality vs. Reality” podcast. fiction".
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