'The Science' Doesn't Really Matter to the Left

Pre-Pandemic, leftists were fond of using "the science" as a rhetorical cudgel, most noticeably in the public policy debate over fossil fuels. To take much of what that side of the debate said at face value, there was a broad consensus among scientists that continued use of fossil fuels at current rates would soon cause irreparable damage to the Earth's climate.

Let's set aside several questions for the moment, such as, (1) whether there really is a consensus, (2) what any such consensus might be about, or (3) whether the left's particular policy prescriptions are a good idea or even follow from what scientists know.

Since then, the left has invoked "the science" for its particular policy prescriptions regarding the pandemic. Exhibit A is California's Gavin Newsom, who should be recalled. Newsom has imposed varying degrees of "lockdown" by decree ever since "two weeks to flatten the curve" in the spring, in the name of following "the science." To wit:

The governor has failed to follow the science.

If he were to use what science taught him, in other words, to "follow the science", he would allow children back in school. Instead of the government spending staggering amounts of money to prop up a closed economy, it should spend some on sanitizing the schools, keep them safe from COVID, and let the children go back to class. Children were allowed in classrooms throughout the pandemic but only when used as a daycare. Science tells us the virus does not know the difference when the same classroom is used for education.

But in case anyone out there might object that Newsom is misinformed or is misapplying what he regards as "the science," the public sector teachers' unions are -- inadvertently -- doing a fine job of teaching us (!) this same lesson on a national scale, by insisting on remote learning anywhere they have enough political clout to do so:

Scientists go to where the evidence leads them, not simply to wherever they feel like going at the moment. (Image by The National Cancer Institute, via Unsplash, license.)

[N]otwithstanding the scientific consensus -- namely, that closing schools does far more harm than good -- teachers' unions in many big cities have simply refused to go back into the classroom, claiming it's too dangerous. Public schools didn't reopen in the fall in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and most other large cities. Several teachers' unions have said flatly that they won't come back until a vaccine is available.

And then there's New York City, which tragically shut down its school system on Thursday after having opened schools to hybrid learning in late September. Did Mayor Bill de Blasio make the decision to close them because they were suddenly Covid-19 hotspots? No. Although the citywide positivity rate has risen above 3%, the rate of infection in the schools was astonishingly low: 0.15%. Kids were not infecting teachers, and teachers weren't infecting students -- just as study after study had suggested would be the case.

Rather, it was because to get the United Federation of Teachers to agree to come back to the classroom, de Blasio had to agree that if the city reached a 3% positivity rate threshold, the school system would return to remote learning.

Was there any science behind the 3% threshold? No...

President Trump lost his reelection bid in part because he ignored science that would have (a) led him to take the pandemic more seriously, and (b) helped him see what he could have done about it. It is now -- without Donald Trump there to make the Democrats look good solely by contrast -- the left's turn in the limelight.

A silver lining to the pandemic may well be that the left will lose its undeserved reputation as standing for reason and science. There lies opportunity for a political movement that truly will.

-- CAV