It was sooo bad The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols has a book called The Death Of Expertise which he’s updated with a new chapter on the pandemic. He’s interviewed in the magazine: Isabel: You argue that one mistake scientists made was to take on the role of elected officials. Can you talk me through that shift? Tom: If you look back at those White House press briefings, where you had people such as Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci standing there uncomfortably while Donald Trump ranted about bleach and lights, you can see where they and other experts felt the need to clarify useful policies in a way that ordinary people could follow, especially because elected leaders—and not just Trump—were making a mess of things. Early in the pandemic, for example, I was impressed by then–New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who seemed like a steady and capable hand on the tiller. But Cuomo—as we now know and as I discuss in the book—was desperately trying to cover up his own lethal mistakes. The scientists, people we’d mostly never heard of at the state and federal levels, stepped forward to issue guidance. But that’s not their job, and, frankly, talking to the public isn’t their main skill set. People, understandably, don’t want to take orders from appointed officials. When it came time to close public places—and, even more important, to reopen them, including schools—scientists got dragged into a huge fight that was more about politics than science. They got tagged as political figures…