There’s something appealing about the view that science floats loftily above us all, accessible to a select few with years of rigorous training in its methods. But, as romantic visions often do, it fell hard to earth. The follow-the-science logic we have lived under during Covid demands wartime sacrifices from the public while rationalizing sloth from leaders and institutions in mobilizing tools to relieve the burden. It became an easy out for bureaucratic turf protection, lost dynamism and institutional fecklessness. “Follow the science” became a failure to lead, a way to shift the onus of responsibility from presidents, Congress, health authorities and school boards onto the public.
This is a bad place for us to be.
Yep. And Fauci, et al. — with a major boost from the news media — got us there.
Plus: “While public health leaders are now gingerly attempting to confront their mistakes, what we have seen in, say, the C.D.C.’s new internal report are halfhearted, proceduralist ideas. The public health establishment will not be able to do better than this without real soul-searching. And that will require swallowing a bitter pill: labeling Dr. Fauci’s Covid legacy and the approach it embodied a failure. His retirement is an opportune moment to move on from the view of science he stood for throughout the pandemic to something new.”