Liberals have been introspecting (some may say self-flagellating) since the 2024 election, to varying degrees of convincingness and success. There’s the usual genre of complaints—NIMBYism, identity politics, the crisis of masculinity, forgetting about the factory man—but the one thing liberals agree on is that they can’t be blamed for following their good, apolitical science. Today’s guests want you to rethink that. We’re thrilled to have on Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, and Stephen Macedo, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values, both at Princeton University, to discuss their new book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.

We open up the book by asking our guests why they wrote this book—why attack liberals’ response to the COVID pandemic, and why now? Lee and Macedo argue that liberal science and policymaking early in the pandemic faced multiple epistemic failures, from undisclosed conflicts of interest to the silencing of opinions outside the mainstream. David defends the United States’s COVID policy response, but Lee and Macedo press their point that value-laden judgments were made by state and local officials who avoided responsibility by claiming to follow the science. We wrap up the episode with a discussion of scientific expertise in modern democracies.

This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.

Referenced Readings

• Great Barrington Declaration

• “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?” by Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya

• “What Sparked the COVID Pandemic? Mounting Evidence Points to Raccoon Dogs” by Smriti Mallapaty

• “Statement in Support of the Scientists, Public Health Professionals, and Medical Professionals of China Combating COVID-19” by Charles Calisher et al.

• “Everyone Wore Masks During the 1918 Flu Pandemic. They Were Useless.” by Eliza McGraw

• “The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else” by David Wallace-Wells

• The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease by Richard E. Neustadt and Harvey V. Fineberg