In Covid’s Wake

The Covid pandemic quickly led to the greatest mobilization of emergency powers in human history. By early April 2020, half the world’s population were living under quarantine. The most devastating pandemic in a century and the policies adopted in response to it upended life as we knew it. In this book, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee examine our pandemic response and pose some provocative questions: Why did we ignore pre-Covid plans for managing a pandemic? Did we adequately consider the costs and benefits of different policy options? And, aside from vaccines, did the policies adopted work as intended?

With In Covid’s Wake, Macedo and Lee offer the first comprehensive—and candid—political assessment of how our institutions fared during the pandemic. They describe how, influenced by Wuhan’s lockdown, governments departed from their existing pandemic plans. The policies adopted largely benefited the laptop class and left so-called essential workers unprotected; extended school closures hit the least-privileged families the hardest. Science became politicized and dissent was driven to the margins. In the next crisis, Macedo and Lee warn, we must not forget the deepest values of liberal democracy: tolerance and open-mindedness, respect for evidence and its limits, a willingness to entertain uncertainty, and a commitment to telling the whole truth.