The problem with DeSantis's surgeon general

What is happening here is not just that Ladapo does not appear to be competent for the job (which I think he isn’t), it’s that he has apparently subjugated the science to a right wing political ideology. For Ron DeSantis (Florida’s governor), that is a feature, not a bug. This is a very dangerous phenomenon…

I have to bring up the iconic example of this, Lynsenkoism in the former Soviet Union. In this case experts were chosen not based on their expertise, but based on their alignment with the prevailing political ideology. This resulted in an agricultural disaster, and also hampered the science of genetics in Russia for generations. Ladapo is essentially Lynsenko for the far right’s attempt at minimizing the pandemic and public health measures to contain it.

If we are to function as a society, we need to have a baseline respect for facts, and the processes we use to determine which facts are reliable and more likely to be true. Without this anchor to reality, we will collectively drift off into a fantasy land, more made of our nightmares than our dreams.