Forbes - Four months into the Covid-19 crisis, America still doesn’t have adequate testing, consistent messaging on face masks, or sufficient PPE for medical workers. But our failures are not limited to failures of disaster policy and preparedness. The challenges Covid-19 presents have been exacerbated by our inability to have productive, good-faith discourse about how to respond to the pandemic.
This column is part of a series in which I examine how the humanities can help unlock our most urgent social problems, even problems rooted in science and medicine. I spoke with philosophers Justin Tosi (Texas Tech University) and Brandon Warmke (Bowling Green State University) about their new book, Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk, to understand why Covid-19 discourse has been so polarizing.