Donald Trump is getting pummeled from one end of the country to the other for the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic.
But compared to what’s going on in some parts of Europe, Trump comes out looking pretty good. In fact, the top scientist in the EU has just resigned his position, saying, “I have seen enough of both the governance of science, and the political operations at the European Union.”
The head of the European Research Council, Mauro Ferrari, got tired of running into a brick wall when he proposed ways to address the health crisis.
EU Commission spokesman Johannes Bahrke confirmed to The Associated Press that Ferrari resigned, effective immediately.
Ferrari said his rejected proposal would have provided scientists around the world with resources and opportunities to fight the pandemic, including diagnostic tools and science-based behavioral dynamic approaches to replace “the oft-improvised institutions of political leaders.”
Ferrari said he will return to the “the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19, with real resources and responsibilities, away from offices in Brussels, where my political skills are clearly inadequate, and again at the true service of those who need new medical solutions.”
Like any true bureaucrat, the EU defended itself against this attack by citing impressive, but meaningless numbers.
A spokesperson for the European Commission defended the research council’s response to the pandemic.
The spokesperson told the Financial Times that 50 ongoing or completed European Research Council projects were contributing to the response to COVID-19 and said the EU is backing 18 urgent research and development projects and financially supporting German company CureVac’s work on a possible vaccine.
Who cares about how many projects the EU is funding? Which projects? What are they studying? Obviously, the research and development projects being backed by the EU aren’t helping anything. Italy, a nation of 60 million people, has lost more people to the virus than the U.S., which has 320 million. Spain has slightly fewer fatalities at 15, 500 than the U.S. death toll of 16,700. Spain has 47 million people.
The EU is presently squabbling over how to fund the massive bailout that will be needed to get the continent’s economy moving again. But the notion that they have done a better job in combatting the virus is bogus. If they had, there would be far fewer infections and deaths per capita than the U.S. Spain has an astonishing 300 deaths per million citizens. Italy has 283. The U.S. is ranked 11th at 39.39 deaths per million.
Perhaps anti-Trump hysterics should count their blessings.
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