The Trump administration is playing peekaboo with reality
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Peekaboo is a fun game to play with infants. Lacking object permanence, hiding your face from a baby before brilliantly revealing it is sure to raise a smile, as their little brains try to figure out what’s going on on Earth.
It’s a little less fun to play this game with the richest and most powerful nation on the planet, but that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from trying.
For decades, U.S. federal agencies have conducted detailed public health investigations that have influenced policy on everything from combating drug addiction to food insecurity. But these data collection exercises are now interrupted, if not canceled altogether (see the American public health system is flying blind after major budget cuts).
By metaphorically covering its eyes, the US government seems to hope that these problems will simply go away, but the opposite is true.
As we learned during the height of the covid-19 pandemic, data, monitoring and preparation go hand in hand when it comes to preventing disasters. Statistical agencies and other data collectors are not just clipboard worriers, but clipboard warriors – our first line of defense against the unknown.
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While not all heroes wear a cape, some do their best to make one from a spreadsheet.
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The United States is not the only country that seems to have forgotten this. For some years now, the UK’s Office for National Statistics, once considered a world-class body, has been plagued by poor data quality and inaccurate statistics, partly due to underfunding of its activities.
Part of the problem is that this type of work has a boring public image. No politician has ever been elected by promising a survey in every mailbox, and statisticians are unlikely to become superstars.
But this must change. While not all heroes wear a cape, some do their best to fashion one from a spreadsheet, and this type of data slog should be applauded and supported. Governing without object permanence is a bad idea, as the United States is sadly about to discover.
