America is suffering from a sickness that has the potential to forever change the way we live. No, I’m not talking about the coronavirus. That’s a natural occurrence. I’m talking about the Trump virus. That’s not.

Watching the nightly pandemic briefings on television I get the sense that there is a huge and potentially fatal disconnect between the scientists and the politicians. This was painfully clear when Trump refused to allow Dr. Anthony Fauci to answer a legitimate press question about hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug Trump and his friends at Fox are pushing as a treatment for COVID-19.

Freelance journalist Edgar Allen Beem lives in Brunswick. The Universal Notebook is his personal, weekly look at the world around him.

Later we learned that Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been in a battle with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro over the use of hydroxychloroquine. Navarro claims he’s qualified to question the country’s leading authority on infectious diseases because, “I’m a social scientist.”

The latest development in the facts vs. fiction battle between science and politics has Trump retweeting a call for Fauci to be fired because he pointed out that American lives could have been saved if the administration had acted sooner. I can only imagine the poop storm if Trump tries to fire Fauci.

There is not a single Trump appointee who is an honest human being qualified to do his/her job. Not one. The honest public servants have all been sent packing. Think Capt. Brett Crozier who was relieved of command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt by acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly because he tried to protect the 4,000 sailors under his command from the coronavirus.

The Trump administration is filled with “acting” appointees precisely because Trump wants only yes men and bootlickers serving him. Now, Modly is gone from the revolving door Trump administration and 585 members of the Roosevelt crew have tested positive for the virus.

The Trump virus has infected the justice department, the state department and the intelligence community, weaponizing and politicizing them all. It has also led to presidential attacks on science and the free press. It is the truth that has suffered most from the ravages of the Trump virus.

Trump keeps maintaining, for instance, that “No one saw this coming.” But that’s total bull. Back in 2015, journalist Ezra Klein wrote in Vox that Bill Gates’ algorithmic model of how flu strains spread determined “a pandemic disease is the most predictable catastrophe in the history of the human race, if only because it has happened to the human race so many, many times before.”

On Jan. 3 of this year, Trump was given formal notice that the coronavirus posed a threat to the United States, but he ignored the threat for the next 70 days. As late as March 7, Trump was saying, “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. No, we’ve done a great job.”

So Trump cut the Centers for Disease Control budget, disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response panel, ignored warnings about the pending pandemic from the intelligence community and delayed testing for the virus. Now he blames previous administrations and governors for the fact that his administration was wholly unprepared to protect the American people.

Donald Trump constantly pats himself on the back, taking credit for things he doesn’t do and no responsibility at all for things he does. And that’s why the Trump virus has infected this country with his feckless lack of leadership and unwillingness to face facts. Let’s pray we find the antidote on Nov. 3.