Heisman Trophy winner and Republican candidate for US Senate Herschel Walker had something to say … [+]
Herschel Walker didn’t exactly “air” on the side of science during his U.S. Senate campaign stop in Hall, Georgia, on Saturday. But videos of what the former college and pro football star said at the campaign stop about Covid-19 and air pollution did go viral.
As you can see in the following videos tweeted by Stephen Fowler, who covers Georgia politics for GPB News, Walker claimed that Covid-19 was “created by China” and that the air in the U.S. and the air in China…well, see for yourself what he said:
OK, you’ve probably heard Walker’s Covid-19 claim before from another mouth. Walker is the Republican candidate trying to take the Senate seat that’s currently occupied by Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia). As I covered for Forbes in 2020, then-U.S. President Donald Trump had repeatedly called the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) the “China virus” and Covid-19 the “kung-flu” on his campaign stops. That’s even after scientists, public health experts, and Asian Americans, who were getting unfairly stigmatized by such labels, had asked Trump to stop doing that.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that Walker, whom Trump has endorsed, is pushing the whole “Covid-19 was created by China” narrative. Is this an apple not falling far from the Trump situation? There’s one teensy weensy problem with this narrative, though. It has not been backed by, you know, science. While China deserves criticism for not being more open about its Covid-19 cases, especially in early 2020, scientific evidence has all along pointed to a non-human animal origin of the SARS-CoV-2, with the virus eventually jumping to humans. Walker is no more a scientist than a Texas ranger. It’s best to stick to real science and scientists when it comes to any Covid-19 origin stories.
But Walker’s floating of his air pollution theory may be new to you. He claimed that the U.S. “has some of the cleanest air, the cleanest water, of anybody in the world.” Walker said this despite the fact that many parts of the U.S. have significant air pollution problems, as shown by the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2022 report. Walker argued that it is pointless to clean up air in America because of, drum roll please, China: “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move.” He continued by saying: “So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up.” Walker also mentioned India as contributing to this situation.
Who knew that air had a mind of its own? Saying that air “decided” to do something is kind of like saying your seat decided to push against your butt, a fart decided to leave your pants and grill some hot dogs in the kitchen, or a piece of chocolate decided to jump into your mouth. Air doesn’t wonder, “should I stay or should I go,” or check Google maps. Sure air does move around. But it isn’t like a clean pair of underwear that has gone sentient, searches for something dirtier, and then moves to replace it.
Moreover, while both India and China have had major air pollution issues, China has been implementing measures to reduce its air pollution since it reached record levels in 2013. A February 2022 report from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), authored by Michael Greenstone, PhD, Guojun He, PhD, and Ken Lee, PhD, found that in the seven years since 2013, air pollution in China had dropped by about 40 percent, accounting for over three quarters of the global decrease in pollution. It had taken the U.S. considerably longer, several decades since implementing air pollution reduction measures in the early 1970s, to achieve a similar magnitude of improvement. This doesn’t mean that China should declare victory and cease its efforts to further reduce its air pollution. That would be a premature declaration. The same would be true for the U.S.
Walker’s airing of his opinions led to his name trending on Twitter on Monday:
From Twitter
Many of the tweet responses to Walker’s air pollution statements consisted of verbal, photo, and video face palms. Then there was the following tweet:
Suggesting that the U.S. shouldn’t do more to reduce air pollution is kind of like suggesting that water not be used on your burning house because others will then use your house. There is already abundant evidence that the U.S. continues to produce too much air pollution. Just look at the smog and air quality alerts around the country and the studies that have linked air pollution to various chronic diseases. There is also considerable scientific evidence linking air pollution to climate change and global warming.
