NIH Director Worried About ‘Epidemic of Misinformation, Disinformation, Distrust That Is Tearing Us Apart’

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, expressed worry on Sunday about an “epidemic of misinformation” in the United States around the covid-19 pandemic.

Chris Wallace opened by asking Collins about the alarming rise in covid-19 cases across the country.

“Assuming current trends of the spread of the virus and assuming the current level of vaccinations, how high could this wave get before it crests? How many new cases could we be seeing a day?” he asked.

Collins said the trend is “going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out” and even suggested, “I will be surprised if we don’t cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks. And that’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in that space again.”

He warned that millions of unvaccinated Americans remain “sitting ducks for this virus,” and specifically addressed the risk to kids from the delta variant.

Wallace brought up some states that are banning mandates for masking up in schools, most notably Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Collins said there is evidence showing masks in the classroom would be effective, lamenting how “politics and polarization have got in the way of a simple public health measure.”

He also reacted to video of parents at one board of education meeting in Tennessee angrily confronting people who urged mask mandates in schools.

It’s devastating that we in this country, the most advanced technological society on the planet, has somehow slipped into a space where the evidence and the basis for making decisions on facts has gotten pushed aside by politics, by social media conspiracies, and by this incredible depth of anger and grievance that seems to be held by so many. Our future as a nation has got to revolve around coming away from that kind of approach to everything or I don’t see how we’re going to solve all of our society’s problems, which are looming in front of us. If I have one thing I’m worried about, it’s not just the epidemic of COVID-19, it’s the epidemic of misinformation, disinformation, distrust, that is tearing us apart.

You can watch above, via Fox News Sunday.

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