Planning for the Wrong Pandemic: Covid-19 and the Limits of Expert Knowledge

The fractious and disorganized governmental response to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States prompted many observers to ask why the country ‒ which had the knowledge, resources, and plans to deal with such an event ‒ was caught so unprepared when the crisis struck.

In fact, as Andrew Lakoff shows, US officials had been planning for a pandemic for more than two decades, and many of these plans were implemented in the early stages of the pandemic. As authorities responded to the cris...