The machinery of denial will return when crisis comes
En su despacho de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, el virólogo José Antonio López Guerrero ofrece una advertencia que trasciende la biología: el mayor peligro ante una futura pandemia no será el patógeno en sí, sino la incapacidad política de responder con coherencia. Observador de la primera crisis del COVID bajo la administración Trump, López Guerrero no habla como militante sino como testigo de un patrón que, teme, se repetirá. La ciencia puede explicar la enfermedad, pero si el poder político trata esa explicación como algo negociable, el conocimiento se detiene antes de convertirse en acción.
- López Guerrero lanza una advertencia concreta: la próxima emergencia sanitaria encontrará el mismo aparato de negación, fragmentación y politización que ya cobró vidas durante la pandemia de COVID.
- Lo que inquieta al virólogo no es solo la virulencia de futuros patógenos, sino que los mecanismos institucionales que debían haberse reformado siguen rotos bajo el segundo mandato de Trump.
- La politización de mascarillas, vacunas y protocolos de salud pública —convertidos en símbolos de identidad tribal en lugar de herramientas de supervivencia— dejó un saldo de muertes cuya lección, advierte, no ha sido asimilada.
- López Guerrero defiende que comunicar la ciencia a la sociedad es una obligación profesional, pero reconoce que incluso la comunicación más clara fracasa cuando la voluntad política de actuar sobre ella ha sido erosionada.
- Su pronóstico es sombrío: cuando llegue la próxima crisis, el país enfrentará simultáneamente una amenaza biológica y una política, y ambas serán inseparables.
José Antonio López Guerrero lleva décadas estudiando virus en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, pero en los últimos años ha dedicado una parte creciente de su energía a explicar lo que encuentra. A sus cincuenta y cuatro años, formado entre Extremadura y Alemania, se ha convertido en una de las voces más reconocidas de la divulgación científica en España. Cuando habla del segundo mandato de Trump, no lo hace como político sino como alguien que vivió una pandemia y vio algo más peligroso que el propio virus: el colapso de la gobernanza en el momento en que más se necesitaba.
Su advertencia es precisa. Cuando llegue la próxima crisis sanitaria —y habla de ello como una certeza, no como una posibilidad— los mismos patrones volverán: la negación, la fragmentación del mensaje de salud pública, la sustitución de la evidencia por el cálculo ideológico. Durante la pandemia que marcó el primer mandato de Trump, López Guerrero observó cómo medidas básicas como las mascarillas o las vacunas se transformaron en emblemas de pertenencia tribal. El coste se midió en vidas. La lección, teme, no fue aprendida.
Lo que distingue su análisis es que no separa la amenaza biológica de la política. Un virus obedece las leyes de la biología. Pero la respuesta de un gobierno es una elección, y las elecciones pueden ser catastróficas. El conocimiento científico existe; lo que falta es el camino político para convertirlo en acción. López Guerrero insiste en que un científico que no traduce su trabajo a un lenguaje que la sociedad pueda comprender y usar ha abandonado la mitad de su oficio. Él ha asumido esa segunda mitad: escribe, habla en radio y televisión, y hace el trabajo poco glamoroso de la educación pública.
Pero incluso esa comunicación tiene un límite. Si el aparato político trata las recomendaciones científicas como algo negociable —sujeto a preferencias electorales o ideológicas— el mensaje se rompe en el momento de la implementación. Y eso, concluye López Guerrero, es exactamente lo que el segundo mandato de Trump ha consolidado: no ha resuelto el problema de fondo, lo ha atrincherado. Las instituciones que debían reformarse siguen fracturadas. Cuando llegue la próxima pandemia, el país no enfrentará solo un patógeno. Enfrentará también a sí mismo.
José Antonio López Guerrero sits in his office at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, a microbiologist who has spent decades studying viruses and, more recently, explaining what he finds to anyone willing to listen. He is fifty-four years old, born in Madrid but shaped by time in Extremadura and Germany—a man whose restlessness has made him one of Spain's most visible voices in science communication. When he speaks about the second Trump administration, he is not speaking as a partisan. He is speaking as someone who watched a pandemic unfold and saw something worse than the virus itself: the collapse of coherent governance at the moment it mattered most.
The warning López Guerrero offers is specific and unsettling. When the next health crisis arrives—and he speaks as though it is not a matter of if but when—the same political dysfunction that characterized the first pandemic response will return. The machinery of denial, the fragmentation of public health messaging, the substitution of ideology for evidence: these are not anomalies he expects to disappear. They are patterns he expects to deepen. He has watched this before. He lived through it. And he sees no structural reason why it would not happen again.
What makes López Guerrero's concern distinctive is that he does not separate the threat of disease from the threat of political failure. A virus is a virus. It follows the laws of biology. But a government's response to that virus is a choice, and choices can be catastrophic. During the pandemic that defined the first Trump years, he witnessed the politicization of basic public health measures—masks, vaccines, testing protocols—transformed into symbols of tribal allegiance rather than tools of survival. The cost was measured in lives. The lesson, he fears, has not been learned.
He is known among his colleagues for a particular insistence: if you cannot explain your work to society, you have chosen the wrong profession. This is not a statement about dumbing down science or making it palatable. It is a statement about responsibility. A scientist who works in isolation, who does not translate findings into language the public can grasp and act upon, has abandoned half the job. The other half is making sure that when crisis comes, people understand what is happening and why the response matters. López Guerrero has devoted considerable energy to this second half. He writes, he speaks on radio and television, he engages in the unglamorous work of public education.
What troubles him now is that even clear communication may not be enough if the political will to act on scientific guidance has been eroded. A virologist can explain transmission. A public health official can recommend isolation. But if those recommendations are filtered through a political apparatus that treats them as negotiable, as subject to electoral calculation or ideological preference, the communication fails at the point of implementation. The knowledge exists. The pathway to action does not.
López Guerrero's prediction is not optimistic. He expects that when the next pandemic arrives—whether it emerges from a novel pathogen, a seasonal virus that mutates in an unexpected direction, or a spillover event from animal populations—the same patterns will reassert themselves. Political leaders will minimize the threat. Scientific advisors will be sidelined or ignored. The public will be left to navigate contradictory messages and competing narratives. And the death toll will reflect not just the virulence of the pathogen but the failure of governance to respond with coherence and speed.
The second Trump administration, in his view, has not solved the underlying problem. It has entrenched it. The institutions that might have been reformed, the protocols that might have been strengthened, the relationships between science and policy that might have been rebuilt—these remain fractured. And so when the next crisis comes, as it will, the country will face not just a biological threat but a political one, and the two will be inseparable.
Citações Notáveis
If you cannot explain your work to society, you have chosen the wrong profession— José Antonio López Guerrero
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
You're saying the virus itself is less dangerous than the government's response to it?
Not less dangerous—but the damage compounds. A virus kills through infection. A failed response kills through infection plus chaos, misinformation, delayed action. One is biology. The other is choice.
But surely people learned something from the last pandemic. Surely there's institutional memory.
There is. But institutions can be dismantled or ignored. Memory without power to act is just nostalgia. What matters is whether the next crisis finds a government willing to listen to evidence.
You keep saying "when the next crisis comes." Are you certain it will?
Viruses don't ask permission. We live in a world of constant spillover events, mutation, emergence. The question is not whether but when. And when it arrives, the political machinery will be the same.
What would need to change to break that cycle?
The relationship between science and power would need to be rebuilt. Not as advisors to be consulted and ignored, but as essential to decision-making. That requires political will. I don't see evidence of it.
Is there anything a scientist can do besides warn?
Communicate clearly. Keep the knowledge accessible. Build trust with the public so that when officials try to distort the facts, people recognize it. It's not enough, but it's what we have.