America’s Culture Wars Have Overtaken Health Care

Numerous studies have revealed that thousands of Republican leaning Americans needlessly died during the Covid epidemic due to their refusal to get vaccinated and/or take other medically recommended steps to avoid infection.  Theirinsistence on exercising their "freedom" took them to the graveyard.  Sadly, health care and medicine in general are becoming increasingly politicized, especially in the realm of health care for transgender individuals and in vaccinations in general where anti-vaxers label themselves as "anti-woke" and "patriots."   With the exodus of moderates and the more educated from the Republican Party, theat party's agenda is increasing driven by anti-knowledge, anti-modernity evangelicals and Christofascist who have long seen modern knowledge and science as a threat to their fragile, not factual belief system.  Enter politicians within the GOP who place promoting themselves to this ignorance embracing party base - think Ron DeSantis and those like him - and the situation has only worsened as noted in a piece in The Economist.  Here are article excerpts:

ASIDE FROM public schools, another covid and culture-war casualty, no institution had a steeper fall in public confidence in 2021 than the medical establishment, according to Gallup, a pollster. In 2022 this downward trend continued: only Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court and the presidency fell faster. And politics is making matters worse.

The decline is not new. In 1966 seven in ten Americans said they had great confidence in “the people in charge of running medicine”; by 2012 just three in ten did. Historically, Republicans trusted the system more than Democrats . . . . Then came covid-19. Whereas in 2018 public faith was nearly identical in both camps, by 2021 it had split, rising to 46% among Democrats and falling to 32% among Republicans. More than four in five Democrats now trust medical advice from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared with less than one in three Republicans.

One politician to have tapped into these feelings is Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, who sprang to prominence during the pandemic by keeping his state open in the face of establishment pressure for lockdowns. He looks likely to run for president on an “anti-woke”, “anti-migration” and “anti-mandates” platform. In December he all but added “anti-vax” to his schtick . . . . He also promised that a Public Health Integrity Committee would scrutinise advice from the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

The state supreme court has since approved his request for a grand-jury probe. His state boards of medicine and osteopathy are soon expected formally to endorse guidance to ban transgender treatment for minors, a move seen by some as a political takeover of medical institutions.

“A lot of such political stances boil down to social identity and virtue signalling,” says Myiah Hutchens, at the University of Florida. Pledging allegiance to the “correct” answers on masking, mandates and transgender care has become a badge of identity for firebrands . . . .

Notable about Mr DeSantis’s approach is that, as part of his attack on mainstream scientists, he presents himself as a guardian of true science. . . . . Many countries struggled with imperfect decision-making between scientists and politicians during the early stages of covid-19. But whereas others mostly got through without seriously harming science’s reputation, America did not.

Few areas of medicine have become as politically heated, and in need of cool-headed research, as transgender care for children. Neither side seems to be engaging in good faith. Some Democrats have misrepresented the medical consensus around how best to help children with gender-related distress, presenting this as a closed matter when there is no global scientific consensus. The cherry-picking of evidence by medical bodies such as the American Academy of Paediatrics helps explain why Republicans have become twice as likely as Democrats to believe scientists have agendas beyond the pursuit of scientific fact.

Several southern governors have sought similar bans, but most have seen their efforts blocked in courts. By going through his state’s board of medicine, Mr DeSantis not only ensures the ban is more likely to get through, he will also be able to claim it is based in science. “Florida appears to be the focus group for now,” warns Brandon Wolf, from Equality Florida, an LGBTQ+ rights group, “If successful I can guarantee you will see other states replicate it.”

Political opportunism, with both parties loving science where it suits them and spitting it out where it does not, is nothing new to James Cantor, a sex researcher who has seen “fair-weather friends” come and go.

All this has real consequences. Republican voters are less likely to get a covid-19 booster. They have also become more hesitant about other vaccines, including flu shots . . . An outbreak of measles in Ohio in November and December seemed entirely down to unvaccinated children. “We haven’t had politicised epidemics before,” says Robert Blendon, at Harvard University. “There were never Republican views of polio, or H1N1 or smallpox, and Democrat views.”

Whether the genie of “blue” and “red” science can be put back into the test tube will depend in part on the medical establishment, as well as on politicians. But neither political party seems to have much interest in doing so, as both thrive on each other’s seeming unreasonableness. Americans’ health will suffer as a result.