Twelfth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

As the Covid crisis continues to rage on, we are faced with the question: Can government, particularly democratic government, adequately cope with this crisis? Politics, particularly democratic politics, often depends on emotion and popular perceptions that are not necessarily grounded in scientific reality. Are we calling upon government to do too much? The scientific approach to Covid depends on reasoning, truth, and the dispassionate determination of the validity of findings. The scientific approach must be data driven, truth based and discovered or discerned. Too many decision makers in the United States are impassioned not reflective; pandering to popular bias and prejudice; validating finding by popular acceptance and ignoring data and facts in favor of convenient truths. In short, epidemiological decision making seems at variance with democratic decision making while at the same time government decisions control the extent to which sound epidemiology can guide public health policy. This problem is part of a wider problem regarding the extent to which the democratic political process can be relieved upon to address problems that are largely capable only of scientifically based solutions such as pandemics and climate change. This paper argues that we need to emphasize the principles of democratic science and democratic scientific decision making. Specifically, this paper: (1) Delineates the principles of democratic science and democratic scientific decision making and (2) Applies these derived principles to decisions regarding combating the Covid crisis.