What kind of science did Bob Enyart peddle?
Whatever the strain, it killed him.
It wasn't cross-over equine science – the wonders of horse dewormer. It wasn't Clorox tonic or one dose too many hydroxychloroquine.
It was just anti-vax, anti-fact quackery.
On weekly broadcasts of his "Real Science Radio" program, initially contrived to promote biblical "creation science" – you know, dinosaurs coexisting with man -- Enyart went in all directions that didn't intersect with actual scientific inquiry. That included his takes on vaccination, mask-wearing, evolution, climate change and sexual orientation.
Along the way, the Colorado-based evangelist even mocked AIDS victims, pronouncing their fates just desserts.
On-air during that epidemic, Enyart, whose day job was to be pastor of Denver Bible Church, yucked it up like Rush Limbaugh in reading the obituaries of AIDS victims and playing a sliver of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust."
Fast-forward to now. Enyart joins a startling list of five conservative talk-radio hosts – tally courtesy of the Washington Post -- who inveighed against vaccines and masking, and have died from COVID-19.
No better testimony to what medical professionals tell us.
With Donald Trump setting the tone, we have entered a period where people who know nothing about science lead others into harm's dark corridor.
All they have to do is search online and find their predispositions or suspicions, affirmed by fellow agents of speciousness. Agents who, like Trump, have contributed to many deaths.
One can see why, after putting a search on for "COVID vaccinations" and "fertility," many women forgo shots. They can find an "expert" like former Pfizer executive Michael Yeadon, who says vaccination causes infertility.
It's a dangerous situation when virology must compete with Google-ology.
Yeadon also disputes the science affirming asymptomatic carrying of the virus, while asserting that people who've had the virus are not vulnerable to its variants. Let's just say that dozens of studies have shown otherwise.
Claims like this have led almost one-third of all unvaccinated people to believe that the shots cause infertility.
This despite maternal medical organizations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine jointly urging that pregnant women get vaccinated.
Obviously we have two populations regarding what epidemiologists now call the "pandemic of the unvaccinated."
The first is people who have long resisted vaccines, possibly because they had a bad reaction from one. The second is people who've never given the matter much thought. Now, with their very lives on the line, they are letting someone else do their thinking for them.
These are the kinds of people susceptible to Nicki Minaj's ridiculously irresponsible tweet about a man in Trinidad getting swollen testicles from the shot. It was debunked at the speed of sound.
A survey by a consortium of research institutions including Harvard University found that 20 percent of Americans believe at least one false claim about the COVID-19 vaccine.
And so we have players like Tucker Carlson and others in the Fox News clown car constantly raising doubts about the vaccines, even while Fox News requires employees to reveal their vaccination status.
We have Ron "What Me Worry?" DeSantis standing by silently as a speaker at one of his events states that the vaccines alter our DNA.
And we have Bob Enyart, dead because he took his own advice.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
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