To many observers, one of the surprising features of the rule of experts that prevailed during the pandemic was its reliance on fervent moral exhortation. Rather than coolly determining and communicating the facts of the situation, public-health officials and high-profile physicians denounced those who strayed from their hygienic injunctions as “literal murderers” and used fire-and-brimstone rhetoric to invoke the apocalyptic threat posed by the virus. In some accounts, this marked a turn away from an earlier depoliticizing agenda on the part of technocrats.
