But the timeline of a pandemic is much more rapid than that of other public controversies about science (like climate change), meaning that the reality of the situation and the consequences of political acts that are divorced from scientific reality present themselves much more immediately for all to see.59 In location after location around the country and around the world, people seemed shocked that the virus could devastate their population and flood their hospitals with patients, even though the virus had done this exact thing in other places just a few weeks before.
