Democracy should certainly be informed by expert knowledge but democratic governments are entitled to take their own view on the policies that might follow. Benajmin Disraeli, a 19th century UK conservative politician, once commented, after a major extension in the franchise, that political elites must now educate their masters. Disraeli showed a degree of humility in leadership that seems to be absent among the CDC and their defenders. It may not be a fashionable view in the US but, if scientific elites do not like the policy consequences of democracy, the proper response is not to copy Trumpism from a different direction but to acknowledge their own failure….
Biomedical and public health élites are not a fourth branch of government under the US Constitution. It is time that some of them remembered that.
A Social Science Space blog