There’s a lot of sad things about the pandemic and a lot of things that everyone can learn from.   The failures of both our leaders and citizens to work well to fight against the virus’ spread...but one core culprit that must be addressed if we are to hope to better deal with whatever the next crisis might be is rampant anti-intellectualism.  

Of course I self-identify as “an intellectual,” and while there’s certainly some self-serving and self-righteous hubris associated with this particular concern, it really isn’t about me.  Rather, it is about learning to trust people who have the needed expertise to help us fix our present problems or to appropriately warn us about impending ones.  

The current national outpouring of love and support for educators, doctors, medical experts (like Dr. Fauci), and those who can generate useful modeling data speaks to a growing public recognition that the hard work of research is quite valuable.  Will everyone remember this afterwards? I don’t expect everyone to...hopefully enough will...