By: Kate Sullivan, CNN
Washington (CNN) – Eighty-one Nobel Prize winners endorsed Joe Biden for president in an open letter on Wednesday, citing the former vice president’s “willingness to listen to experts” and his “deep appreciation for using science to find solutions.”
The Nobel laureates, winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Medicine and Physics, stressed the importance of elected leaders making decisions based on science, particularly during a global pandemic.
“At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy,” the letter reads. “During his long record of public service, Joe Biden has consistently demonstrated his willingness to listen to experts, his understanding of the value of international collaboration in research and his respect for the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country.”
The person who organized all of the laureates to endorse Biden is Illinois Democratic Rep. Bill Foster, who is the sole physicist on Capitol Hill, according to a person close to the Nobel Laureate group.
More than 180,000 Americans have died from coronavirus, and more than 6 million people in the US have been infected with the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. Trump has been heavily criticized for his administration’s response to the pandemic, with critics saying his administration has been too slow to respond to the virus and it hasn’t done enough to protect Americans.
Nearly seven in 10 Americans say the US response to the coronavirus outbreak makes them feel embarrassed, according to a recent CNN Poll conducted by SSRS. Sixty-two percent of the public says Trump could be doing more to fight the outbreak, and disapproval of Trump’s handling of the outbreak reached a new high of 58% in the poll.
Biden, who has issued blistering criticism of Trump’s coronavirus response, called on Trump to “stop talking and start listening to the medical experts,” in a March interview with CNN.
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