The Trump administration is playing peekaboo with reality

Peekaboo is a wonderful game to play with babies. Since they lack object permanence, the act of hiding their face from their child before showing it off in a big way is sure to bring a smile as their little ones brain try to find out what is happening on Earth.

It's somewhat less interesting to play this game with the richest and most powerful country on the planet, but that didn't stop Trump administration from trying.

For decades, U.S. federal agencies have conducted detailed public health research that has guided policy on everything from drug addiction to food insecurity. But now these data collection activities are being reduced or canceled altogether (see below). US public health system goes blind after major cuts).

By metaphorically turning a blind eye, the US government seems to hope that these problems will simply go away, but in reality the opposite is true.

How did we find out in the midst COVID-19 pandemicdata, surveillance and preparation all go hand in hand when it comes to preventing disaster. Statistical agencies and other data collectors don't just worry about the clipboard, they are its warriors—our first line of defense against the unknown.

The US is not the only country that seems to have forgotten this. For several years now, the UK Office for National Statistics, once considered a world-class institution, suffer from poor quality data and inaccurate statisticspartly due to underfunding of its activities.

Part of the problem is that this type of work has a boring public image. No politician has ever been elected by promising to deliver a poll to every mailbox, and statisticians are unlikely to become superstars.

But this must change. While not all heroes wear capes, some go out of their way to create one from a spreadsheet, and this type of data tinkering should be welcomed and supported. Governance without object permanence is a bad idea, as the United States will unfortunately soon learn.