There are two large countries besides the U.S.A. that have been governed by anti-science nationalists during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately for India and Brazil, they did not throw out their Trumpian leader and they’re paying the price.

The New York Times reports that in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India’s “crematories are so full of bodies, it’s as if a war just happened. Fires burn around the clock. Many places are holding mass cremations, dozens at a time, and at night, in certain areas of New Delhi, the sky glows. Sickness and death are everywhere.”

In President Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, “a surge in coronavirus infections has brought many of Brazil’s intensive-care units to the brink of collapse. And daily and monthly death tolls have reached record highs.” Researchers say the health care system has never before suffered such a severe calamity.

In order to prevent the number of cases and deaths from spreading further across the country, as well as to reduce bed occupancy rates, the researchers advocate for the adoption of strict prevention and control actions, such as stricter measures for restricting non-essential activities. They also highlight the need to expand measures of physical and social distance, the use of masks on a large scale, and the acceleration of vaccination.

A Johns Hopkins University analysis of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 of population, shows Brazil in third place globally, and America in fifth. India is in 19th place, but they’re moving up fast. The MIT Technology Review reports “the country set a global record for new cases for the fifth day in a row yesterday, reporting 352,991 and 2,812 deaths. The true figure is almost certainly far higher. Modeling by researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests the true figure for new daily cases in India is likely to now number in the millions.”

As far back as 2016, Indian scientists banded together to protest the Modi government. Scientific American reported at the time:

Three murders, a suicide and a rash of political appointments at universities have thrown Indian academia into an uproar against the conservative (right-wing) government. Prominent artists, writers, historians and scientists are speaking out against an intensifying climate of religious intolerance and political interference in academic affairs.

“What’s going on in this country is really dangerous,” says Rajat Tandon, a number theorist at Hyderabad Central University. Tandon is one of more than 100 prominent scientists, including many heads of institutions, who signed a statement protesting “the ways in which science and reason are being eroded in the country.” The statement cites the murder of three noted rationalists — men who had dedicated their lives to countering superstition and championed scientific thought — and what they see as the government’s silent complicity.

Anti-science sentiment has also been growing in Brazil, as The Guardian reported a year ago:

Top Brazilian politicians from across the political spectrum have warned that Jair Bolsonaro is putting thousands of lives at risk with what they called his reckless, paranoid, anti-scientific and belligerent response to the coronavirus.

In a series of scathing interviews – conducted as 26 of Brazil’s 27 state governors convened an emergency meeting to discuss Bolsonaro’s behaviour – regional chiefs told the Guardian they feared the far-right leader was sowing confusion over the need for quarantine and social distancing measures, and wasting precious time setting political bonfires to energize his radical base.

Bolsonaro sparked fury on Tuesday with an extraordinary address to the nation in which he rubbished the quarantine measures and travel restrictions being implemented by many state governors and urged Brazilians to return to work and schools – in contradiction of his own health ministry’s counsel.

The comments stunned state governors – many of whom are now in open revolt against the president.

“I was gobsmacked,” said Ronaldo Caiado, the rightwing governor of Goiás state and a former Bolsonaro ally.

“It’s appalling. You cannot govern a country like this,” added Caiado, who this week severed ties with Bolsonaro. “At a moment like this he should have the humility to leave things to those who understand them.”

Bolsonaro’s motto “Brazil before everything else” sounds a lot like Trump’s “Make America great again.” Both are resonant of Prime Minister Modi’s political movement, which pushes “the notion that India is the homeland of Hindus and all others — the hundreds of millions of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others in this sprawling, secular democracy — are interlopers.”

It’s painfully obvious that nationalism is coupled with anti-rationalism in all three countries, which made them particularly ill-equipped to deal with a problem like COVID-19 that demands a very evidence-based approach. Yet, in America, the nationalist movement was defeated last November. The change has been dramatic, as President Joe Biden pointed out from the North Lawn of the White House on Tuesday:

Today, in less than 100 days, more than 67 percent — two thirds of our seniors — are now fully vaccinated and more than 80 percent of seniors have had at least one shot.  That effort has resulted in a drop of 80 percent in deaths among American seniors, a 70 percent drop in hospitalizations.

In America, it seems like the pandemic is in retreat. The C.D.C. just relaxed its outdoor mask mandate. On January 13, a week before Trump left office, there were 4,139 COVID-19 deaths here. On April 26, the number was down to 492. Brazil and India are on the opposite trajectory.

The availability of vaccines is major contributor to the differing fortunes of the three countries, but so is disinformation. Disrespecting and ignoring science can be deadly. Biden righted the ship with an assist from the vaccines, but also by putting all his focus on getting the problem under control using the best expert advice available. If he hadn’t been fighting against the hangover of a year of Trumpist irrationality, things would be in an even better condition in America.