A re­elected Donald Trump would continue to attack studies that stand in the way of his agenda—and to make support for scientific inquiry a tribal belief.

The president of the United States cannot control the trajectory of a hurricane, but he can—we learned in 2019—force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to endorse a trajectory that he invented. Thus went Sharpiegate, the brief episode that began when Donald Trump tweeted a warning about Hurricane Dorian’s danger to several states. It was one of his more anodyne tweets, but he erroneously included Alabama. He doubled down when questioned, producing as proof a NOAA forecast altered with what looked suspiciously like a Sharpie. When this failed to quiet criticism, he strong-armed the agency into a statement that affirmed his tweet.

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The pandemic, of course, is where Trump’s willful and wishful ignorance turned the most deadly. Even as he privately acknowledged the danger of the novel coronavirus in February 2020, he publicly proclaimed that it would “go away” as the weather warmed. When that didn’t happen, Trump tried new ways to downplay the virus’s threat. He promoted miracle cures: first hydroxychloroquine and then convalescent plasma, diverting federal resources to drugs that did nothing against the virus. He mocked masks. When the vaccines finally arrived, he endorsed only half-heartedly what should have been his administration’s crowning scientific achievement, because admitting that the shots were a big deal would have meant admitting that the virus was a big deal.

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The upshot of Trump’s polarization of science is bad for everyone. The early days of the coronavirus were, despite everything that came after, a time of remarkable social cohesion. COVID attitudes had not yet hardened along clear partisan lines, and Americans, by and large, stayed home at first. We followed social-distancing guidelines. We successfully flattened the curve, at least for a time. In another crisis—another hurricane, another pandemic—we will again have to rely on one another. But can we, if we cannot even agree on the same reality?

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