For a devout post-modernist, open discussion is subordinate to a single-minded pursuit of justice. Long a debating point within elite universities, post-modernism escaped, like a laboratory leak, into the real world of Covid politics at the beginning of this decade. To protect innocents from harm, our thoroughly post-modern masters silenced dissent and encouraged falsehoods. Public health officials took upon themselves the burden of convincing parents and politicians that schools must be closed, masks worn, and social distancing practiced—even when supporting evidence was thin at best. Those who objected were denied platforms in legacy and social media outlets.
As they tell this story in their new book, In Covid’s Wake, Princeton professors Stephen Macedo and Francis Lee hoist their flag to John Stuart Mill’s standard. A democratic republic that denies itself discourse about the central issue of the day risks becoming a tyranny of the majority, they argue. Suppression of dissent proved to be the worst of all Covid co-morbidities.
by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee
Princeton University Press, 2025, $29.95; 392 pages.
In their account, tables and figures show the extent to which government and citizen responses to Covid’s spread were driven more by politics than science. Democratic governors and mayors locked down businesses, closed school doors, and imposed restrictions on general assemblies; Republican leaders did not. As masks were worn in parks and wildlife reserves in California, motorcyclists rode through the hills and plains of deep-red South Dakota in the Covid summer of 2020 to the dances and beer festivals of Sturgis. Democrats wore face masks, refused to shake hands, and took wide circles to avoid meeting one another; Republicans tossed the masks away while embracing. Democrats tested themselves each time the sun came up; Republicans searched for the double-red line only when forced to do so. Democratic citizens got double vaccinations with a third booster shot; Republicans became increasingly hesitant.
Meanwhile, public health officials and the governments beholden to them crushed dissent and lied knowingly. Two events, highlighted by Macedo and Lee, continue to resonate. In August 2020, a small group of dissenting public health professionals gathered in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts to call for an end to school closures and business lockdowns. Not much could be done to halt the spread of Covid until a vaccine was deployed, they announced. The virus was lethal mainly for those who were very old or had comorbidities. What came to be known as the Great Barrington Declaration insisted that health policy should concentrate on protecting the vulnerable and sick.
Nothing in that Declaration diverged from what was scientifically probable or already the guiding practice both in Sweden and in those parts of the United States colored red on the political map. Yet Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases persuaded news outlets and social media platforms to ignore the writers of the Declaration on the grounds their bizarre advice was beyond the scientific mainstream. How ironic that one of the Declaration’s principal signers, Jay Bhattacharya, would later be confirmed as NIH director after promising the Senate he would sustain free, full, open inquiry about vaccines and viruses.
