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In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

Is this a searing indictment of errors made during the pandemic, or a misreading of public health guidance that rides a wave of COVID revisionism?

Published MAR 11

In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

review

Image credit: PBS.org/NEWSHOUR

The Spin

Establishment-critical narrative

“In Covid’s Wake” perfectly encapsulates the myriad errors in the scientific-political establishment’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In creating a manufactured consensus, leading figures in the scientific community drove the authorities to embrace sweeping mandates that inflicted deep social harm without any firm evidence, all while silencing dissent and masking trade-offs. These are failures that the book confronts head-on, providing strong recommendations to prevent their recurrence.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Commonweal Magazine

Pro-establishment narrative

While Macedo and Lee raise valid points about school closures, their book traffics in dangerous COVID revisionism. By cherry-picking data and minimizing real harms, they fundamentally distort how public health actually operated during an unprecedented crisis. This narrative risks crippling our capacity to respond effectively when the next pandemic strikes — turning legitimate debate over specific policies into a wholesale rejection of the institutions we'll desperately need.

Atlantic

Cynical narrative

“In Covid’s Wake” is a deeply flawed account of the pandemic. The authors, so-called political scientists, dismiss overwhelming clinical and epidemiological evidence showing that public health measures saved lives and mitigated spread, and instead recycle fringe narratives and caricatures of pandemic science. By misrepresenting key facts about NPIs and the risks of COVID-19, and unfairly lionizing contrarian figures, Macedo and Lee actively undermine trust in medical expertise to elevate the status of the laptop professor class to which they belong.

Pandemic Accountability Index Science