In the United States, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the widespread firing and resignation of public health officers. According to one analysis , more than 300 state and local health officials were fired, resigned, or retired between April 1, 2020 and Sept. 12, 2021. One reason for this unprecedented exodus of health officers was the unresolved tension between them wanting to use their legal authority to “follow the science” by imposing restrictions on businesses versus their public legitimacy and the permission granted them by governors or other elected officials for them to actually use that authority. In September, Florida’s top health official resigned, and the governor immediately replaced him with a physician who, similar to the governor, dismisses the benefit of business restrictions, vaccines, masks, and testing to control Covid-19.
When questions for science (“how many lives can we save by doing X?”) clash with questions for democracy and governance (“how much value is a life worth?”), health officials necessarily defer to the governors, mayors, and others who appointed them and who were duly elected to manage the tradeoff between lives and livelihoods for the millions of people under their governance. But what if we elected our health officials, just as we do other public safety officials (e.g., judges, attorneys general, sheriffs) in many cities and states? Read the rest…
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