The Republican Party’s anti-science arrogance is one of the defining characteristics of their craven anti-environmentalism, anti-labor, anti-education, pro big business platform. But as time has gone on, that anti-science sensibility has led to dozens of Republican officials being truly ignorant and stupid when it comes to scientific information. This doesn’t mean that these Republicans are not scientists—it means that their grasp of even basic information, the stuff put in the simplest layman’s terms, flies far over their heads as they search for conspiracies with their tiny racist minds. Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is one such party official.
On Tuesday, Sen. Kennedy went on Fox News to explain how, after he and other Republican officials did nothing, tried nothing, and pretended nothing was happening in the world around them, suddenly Louisiana has a very serious outbreak of COVID-19. As of March 24, Louisiana says they have 1,388 cases and 46 deaths due to the virus. This is literally what he said:
SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Well, we’re a hotspot. And it started in New Orleans and it’s moving into the rest of the state. I think it has had a lot to do with Mardi Gras.
Well, that makes sense. Mardi Gras is a big event with lots of people in close proximity. Mardi Gras came at the end of February, and as a senator, surely Kennedy was briefed on how much the virus had already spread around the world. In fact, you can read my colleague Mark Sumner’s many posts about the virus from February 25. But either way, Mr. Kennedy, could you possibly make this somewhat coherent statement into something more cuckoo bananas?
SEN. KENNEDY: I think our friends in China were worried about their image, more than the world’s health and they sat on this news about the virus for longer than they should have. We held Mardi Gras, people flew in from all over the world, we were in close quarters. One or two had too much to drink and lowered their immune systems—diminished their immune systems—and we got a problem!
Maybe Sen. John Kennedy was too busy in February pushing the frequently debunked, and now disappeared, conspiracy theory that Ukraine was behind the 2016 election interference to really focus on the crafty Chinese leaders hiding that virus information. (The same information that seemed to be readily available in February to anyone willing to type the word “coronavirus” into Google.)
Sen. Kennedy is doing what Trump and the rest of the Republican leadership is doing: trying to pass blame onto China for the Republican Party’s ineptitude. And since the Republican Party deals primarily in being racist, they are being super racist about it. It’s hard to even go into the true silliness of the idea that “one or two had too much to drink and lowered their immune systems” and was “patient zero” at Mardi Gras. From what we’ve seen, there seems to be more than one patient zero infiltrating America by way of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s official gatherings.
The responses to this bit of stupidity were fast and furious.
Sometimes you just have to laugh.
And here’s some science for you:
from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/3alyUfR
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