Twitter users mocked Ivanka Trump on Tuesday as a “fake scientist” after she claimed current Covid lockdowns “are not grounded in science.”
The first daughter made her comments in a retweet of a video of a Ventura, California, restaurant owner’s reaction to being cited for staying open in the face of a closure order. Trump declared:
“These blanket lockdowns are not grounded in science. These arbitrary rules imposed by callous politicians are destroying lives. It is just wrong for small business owners to have [to] fight so hard to keep their American dream alive.”
However, real scientists disagree strongly with Ivanka about the effectiveness of lockdowns amid the rising numbers of coronavirus cases.
Ana Bento, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health at Indiana University Bloomington, told NPR that broad lockdowns are the simplest tool to break the chain of transmission and reduce the probability of people getting infected.
“That’s the whole purpose of it,” Bento said.
Naturally, Twitter users were happy to mock the first daughter’s faulty science and point out the pandemic mistakes her father’s administration made earlier this year.