In Fighting The Pandemic, Policymakers Must Cite Their Sources | On the Media | WNYC Studios

If the ultimate toll of the pandemic depends on trust in government, medicine, and the pharmaceutical industry, we have a long way to go. In varying degrees of reason and paranoia, there’s a lot of distrust to go around. And government itself has perhaps been the most destructive — not just by politicizing the science behind the pandemic in the White House, but by embracing public-health policies that are arbitrary, inconsistent, and largely untethered to actual science. Writing in WIRED this week, science journalist Roxanne Khamsi argued that political leaders have failed to consistently explain the science behind their policies — and that so-called “Covid theater” has only further eroded public trust. She and Bob discuss the damage that arbitrariness and a lack of transparency can do to an already-struggling effort to quash the pandemic.