| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a godfather of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Well, this is awkward: In his new book, Bob Woodward — ever the tight-lipped keeper of secrets — says former President Donald Trump sent Covid testing machines to his buddy Vladimir Putin early in the pandemic, when many Americans couldn't access them. Trump's team categorically denies the allegations and says the book "either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue." But before you take Woodward's 448-page tome to the little boy's room, know that the Russians say it's true:  I know, I know: Take anything the Kremlin says with a grain of salt! But the whole ordeal puts Trump in a bit of a sticky situation. Not only was Putin supposed to be his ride-or-die, it makes Trump's extremely murky pandemic track record look even worse in hindsight. "Although many people lined up to get their Covid shots, more than 300,000 people lost their lives because they skipped or delayed getting the vaccine," F.D. Flam writes (free read). Some of those individuals might be alive today had the president put the same effort into sharing legit information about the virus that he did into FedExing critical testing devices to Moscow. It's no secret that Trump played down the virus while he was president. He frequently referred to Covid as the "China Virus." He mocked people for wearing masks. He mused about whether we should inject bleach into our veins. He lied about the vaccine's arrival, distribution and efficacy. And in doing all that, he courted an even more toxic group of anti-vax acolytes — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Robert Malone, a fringe medical researcher who has appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, for instance — to sow public confusion and erode trust in science.  "The arrival of Covid-19 meant many Americans engaged with science in a way they hadn't before," F.D. explains. Endless scrolling on TikTok and Instagram during lockdowns helped spark an army of armchair experts overnight: "Fatality rates and reproduction numbers became household conversation and stoked arguments on social media. For many people, that attention increased their trust in science and scientists. But it also put scientists — particularly the public health community — under a very hot spotlight." Too often, the CDC "chose a false sense of certainty over the transparency that's at the core of the scientific method," F.D. argues. "Should we wear masks? First no — then yes. Americans were told the science argued for certain restrictions and behaviors (Remember the six-foot rule?), vaccine and booster mandates and even specific theories on origins of the virus. Many dutifully followed along, only to learn months or years later that some of these edicts were at best uncertain, at worst outright wrong." Regaining that trust will involve treating everyone with respect — even those peddling conspiracy theories on the internet — and being honest about what approaches work. "When experts don't follow their own rules, it hurts credibility," F.D. writes. (It also makes you look rather idiotic: One of New York City's top public health advisors recently admitted he attended sex and dance parties in the summer of 2020 when he was telling everyone else to social distance and mask up.) Scientists also need to be more comfortable with the unknown. F.D. says epidemiologist Michael Osterholm's unique approach to the pandemic — "admitting uncertainty, declining to offer false hope, carefully explaining why he believes what he does, avoiding the political fray and staying nonjudgmental when guiding the misinformed" — could be a template for restoring trust in public health. Read the whole thing. Bonus Trust-the-Science Reading: Speaking of scientific breakthroughs: I guess the Nobel Foundation is just a shill for Google now? I'm kidding, obviously. But it is remarkable that two prizes were given to either former or current Google employees in the span of 24 hours. Parmy Olson has the details: On Thursday, the top prize for chemistry went to the head of Alphabet Inc.'s AI efforts, Demis Hassabis, along with two other key scientists, for a years-long project that used artificial intelligence to predict the structure of proteins. The day before, Geoffrey Hinton, a former executive at Google who's been called a godfather of AI, won the Nobel prize for physics along with physicist John Hopfield, for work on machine learning.
Although it's certainly nice to be awarded for hard work — Hassabis' ten-year plan involves winning between three and five Nobel Prizes — Parmy says "such recognition obscures concerns about both the technology itself and the increasing concentration of AI power in a handful of companies." Google gets about 80% of its revenue from advertising, it's now cramming those ads into its new AI search tool to the detriment of consumers and the environment: No wonder Dave Lee says Justice Department officials are keen to break up the tech behemoth. The government's latest filing suggests they might force the search giant to hand over its "indexes, data, feeds, and models used for Google search, including those used in AI-assisted search features" to rivals so that they can dip into the company's secret search sauce, too. "The Justice Department clearly believes AI has the potential to unseat traditional web search as the way people find and use information on the internet," Dave writes, which means Google already has the upper hand. The Nobel wins just make that all the more apparent. Bonus Nobel Reading: Google DeepMind's AlphaFold tool is already widely used by pharmaceutical researchers searching for groundbreaking new medicines. — Lisa Jarvis Mark Gongloff says Hurricane Milton threatens "to deliver devastating winds and tornadoes, a wall of ocean water and biblical rainfall" to South Florida, yet a certain social media scammer has decided to stay put, despite her beachside Sarasota home being in a mandatory evacuation zone: She's not the only one hoping and praying for survival. A mere month ago, people were calling this hurricane season mild. Now, Floridians are fatigued by evacuation alerts which can be incredibly costly and sometimes impossible. This afternoon, "Florida's beaches were still littered with debris from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall just 13 days earlier as one of the deadliest and most destructive storms in US history," Mark writes. The catastrophic weather to come will just be icing on an already-dreadful cake: "Climate change may not cause hurricanes, but when they do form, it tends to turn them into blockbusters," Mark says. Milton threatens to dunk Tampa under nine feet of water. "Anyone in the potential path of a hurricane — which can extend hundreds of miles from shore, as Helene taught us — needs to be prepared for the worst." The champagne supply ought be low on the list of priorities. If America had a middle name, it'd be petroleum — such a beautiful name for a baby girl, no? — because we've gotten freakishly good at pumping out liquid gold in the last decade. Our cars are no longer dependent on Middle Eastern crude, but they were back in 2006 — the last time Israel invaded Lebanon — when the US was only filling 6.8 million barrels a day. Today, that figure has tripled to 20.1 million. "The American oil hegemony doesn't mean Middle East outages don't have a real impact, but it certainly changes the psychology of the market," Javier Blas writes. Six out of every ten Americans are pro-union, but Allison Schrager says organized labor often hampers modernization: "Unions actually prevent the economy from evolving," she writes. "The old union model — built around protecting jobs — is less valuable to workers. This may be why, despite high public support for unions in general, few Americans actually want to join one, and union membership has been declining." The EU's budget is woefully inadequate for the challenges it faces. — Bloomberg's editorial board The problem with banning legacy admissions? The left and the right are control freaks. — Noah Feldman Robinhood needs to diversify its revenue sources — and Britons like to gamble. — Paul J. Davies Argentine President Javier Milei learns a lesson on pragmatism. — Juan Pablo Spinetto South Korea had the courage and foresight to hike rates early. — Daniel Moss A teenage cyber attack has left London's Underground in disarray. — Matthew Brooker China's most powerful stock rally in a decade rose out of desperation. — Shuli Ren Samsung's brutal year could be an opportunity in disguise. — Catherine Thorbecke A small northern state has unexpectedly cemented Modi's hold on power. — Andy Mukherjee Perrier is in peril. Amazon's space race is costly. A pilot died aboard a Turkish Airlines flight. DIY stinky tofu at your own risk. Caitlin Clark is a box office beast. The 2025 Met Gala theme has dropped. A solar storm could bring northern lights far south. Notes: Please send tofu blocks and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Threads, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. | 
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