MacArthur ‘genius’ is a former AIDS activist but not a medical doctor
In addition to being an epidemiologist, Gregg Gonsalves is a legal scholar.
And the multidisciplinary Yale professor is floating the idea of prosecuting the Trump administration under international law for … reopening the economy, or something.
In a series of tweets Wednesday, Gonsalves said the Trump administration’s coronavirus response was “close to genocide” because a disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths was likely to be among “African-Americans, Latinos, other people of color.”
While he didn’t specify what exactly about the administration response caused him to believe this, his Twitter feed suggests Gonsalves believes in models of infections and deaths that predict a spike during the summer, and that the administration won’t try to mitigate that spike as it pressures states to reopen their economies.
https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1257978332567801864
Though his bio does not mention having a law degree, or even expertise in international law, the adjunct professor of law speculated that the administration’s “purposeful, considered negligence, omission, failure to act” could trigger international obligations to hold American officials “responsible.”
https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1257989939633029120
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Later in the day he promoted an article by Jay Rosen, New York University journalism professor, that he said left him “shaken to the core.” Rosen argues that the administration plans to let thousands of daily deaths from COVID-19 “become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible,” triggering “one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in U.S. history” ahead of the election.
https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1258039131462082561
Gonsalves was the subject of a glowing New York Times profile a year ago, noting the 1980s AIDS activist had received the MacArthur Foundation “genius award.” The assistant professor of epidemiology said he wasn’t a typical epidemiologist because he “sometimes borrow[s] techniques from the social sciences and combine[s] them with advocacy and political organizing.”
The only degrees listed in the profile, and mentioned in Gonsalves’ various biographies, are a Yale doctorate in public health and bachelor’s degree in “Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.”
h/t The Sun
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