Trump causes distrust of science: Medical expert Dr. Eric Topol

Scripps Research Translational Institute Founder Dr. Eric Topol looks at how the U.S. responded to the coronavirus since the pandemic began to spread in February and how President Donald Trump causes a distrust in science.

Video Transcript

DR. ERIC TOPOL: Unfortunately, some of this, what you're asking about is the modeling of our president and some of the people that have been supporting that, that are in governmental capacity. So normally, if we had the usual CDC, FDA, NIH, all these government public health agencies that are leading the way, we wouldn't have such questioning. So it's hard at this point to undo these questions like you're asking.

Are mass helpful? They're not just helpful. They're one of our principal, if not the principal strategy. And we're going to need masks even during the vaccine implementation phase next year, because masks are really important. This is a respiratory transmission virus through speech and breathing. And that's how we get the virus from one person to another, or, potentially, even beyond to many people.

So they're so simple to wear a mask, yet there's so many people that refuse. And that's something that we have to get over because the idea is we're trying to work together, a social contract to help each other. And so we need each other to do that, just as we need, eventually, a vaccine to support the vast majority of people. Because these are the types of strategies, ranging from the lowest tech-- a mask-- to the most advanced head of a vaccine, that if we do this together we will put this pandemic behind us much faster.