The problem with “trust the scientists” is twofold. One is that the so-called experts have often been wrong. People have distanced, locked down, and masked up for nearly two years, and Covid continues to spread, with more than 800,000 Americans now dead. Nor can it be said that Covid outbreaks have been limited to areas that have disregarded the public-health community. Right now, New York City, which requires masks and is home to one of the earliest and strictest vaccine-passport regimes in the U.S., is reporting record numbers of cases. The argument that Omicron is different because it is able to evade vaccines is not a particularly compelling defense of the experts, either. Before Omicron, there were four major variants of Covid, and it was only a matter of time before one variant found a way around vaccines. Arguing that people should get vaccinated and boosted anyway because it reduces the chances of severe Covid or death is fair. But were we to shift focus to “reducing death” as opposed to “stopping” or “slowing” the spread, our policies would look a lot differently than they do now.

But put aside the fact that expert guidance has not proven effective in preventing the spread of Covid. Even if the guidance were more effective than it has been, it still wouldn’t justify blindly “trusting the scientists.” The reason is that even if they were doing their jobs effectively, infectious-disease scientists would be myopically focused on providing guidance as to the most effective way to fight infectious diseases. But it is the job of policy-makers, and ultimately, the people, to balance the risk of the disease against other considerations.