May Be in the Wrong Hands
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
- Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; Save me, and I shall be saved, For You are my praise. —Jeremiah 17:14
I was reacquainted with a couple of familiar expressions this week, including the phrase “laboratories of democracy,” while revisiting a topic that many in high places would prefer we forget: the COVID pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 led to the most sweeping mobilization of emergency powers in recorded modern history. Half the world’s population—3.9 billion people—found themselves living under some form of quarantine. In the United States alone, people were told not to leave their homes. Businesses were closed indefinitely. Employees were laid off. Public schools were shut down for months, in some places for years. It was the most disruptive public health crisis in a century, and the policies adopted in response to it upended life as we knew it.
In Covid’s Wake, by Macedo and Lee
In their eye-opening book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton University Press, March 11, 2025), Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee examine our pandemic response and pose unsettling questions: Why were pre-COVID pandemic plans abandoned? Were reasonable dissenting voices treated fairly? Did policymakers adequately weigh the costs and benefits of different strategies? And, apart from vaccines, did the policies adopted actually work as intended? (available on Amazon)
Sadly, the emerging answer appears to be no. The more we learn about what happened in 2020, the more alert we become to how easily government agencies and private-sector forces can persuade us that sweeping interventions are necessary—even when evidence is thin and consequences severe. The more we know the truth, the better equipped we are to guard both our health and our freedoms.
It is understandable that many would prefer to forget. I know I’ve felt something resembling amnesia about the entire episode. Perhaps it is a coping mechanism. Psychologists call it repression—the unconscious pushing away of painful memories to protect oneself from distress. Whether clinical or cultural, the impulse to move on is strong. But forgetting is not the same as learning.
If it seemed at the time that the public health establishment and national policymakers were uninterested in learning from the experiments unfolding across the nation’s fifty “laboratories of democracy,” it may be because they weren’t. For Macedo and Lee, the pandemic exposed a failure of the laboratories-of-democracy ideal. Decision-making, they argue, became “rigidly ideological and moralized,” resistant to adjustment even as new data emerged.
That raises an uncomfortable question: if the states are no longer meaningfully influencing national policy, who is?
Clues can be found in an article published in the Columbia Law Review, Volume 122, No. 8, titled The Myth of the Laboratories of Democracy, by Charles W. Taylor of George Washington University and Heather K. Gerken of Yale Law School. The phrase itself originated with Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who wrote that “a single, courageous State may… serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”
Taylor and Gerken suggest that the story of state experimentation has been romanticized. In reality, they argue, policy diffusion is often driven not by independent experimentation but by networks of special-interest groups, advocacy coalitions, donors, and national political actors. In this environment, the lines between state and federal policymaking blur. “In short,” they write, “there is little gained and much lost from attempts to maintain separation between the state and federal governments.”
Yet the COVID experience complicates that critique. When all fifty states were given similar federal guidance on school closures, masking, and other so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions, they did not respond identically. California issued a stay-at-home order on March 19, 2020; forty-two other states followed by April 7. Seven states—Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming—never issued such an order. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, pushed back against prolonged school and business closures and mask mandates, igniting fierce political backlash. But why should public health decisions have become so overtly political in the first place?
In a broader sense, In Covid’s Wake unintentionally vindicates the federalist principle Brandeis described. States that diverged provided data. Comparisons were possible. Outcomes could be evaluated. That is precisely what laboratories are meant to do.
The same federalist impulse is visible today in Florida’s efforts to scrutinize food additives and manufacturing standards, aligning with reform initiatives such as the MAHA movement and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Whether one agrees with every tactic or not, the underlying principle is familiar: publish the findings, let consumers see the evidence, and allow informed choice to drive reform.
Florida First Lady, Casey DeSantis
As Casey DeSantis recently explained on a recent Relatable podcast with Allie Beth Stuckey, The laboratory in the state of Florida is making their research results publicly available with a new website, https://exposingfoodtoxins.com/ so families can make informed decisions. The results are graphically easy to read and understand. Viewers will notice that not every product tested was harmful. Some were demonstrably better than others. That fact alone undermines the claim that nothing can be done. So far, the state has concentrated their research on baby products, candy, and bread. That’s deliberate. These are the items moms in particular shop for in nearly every trip to the store.
And this is the larger point. Public health, like public policy, must not be insulated from scrutiny. Citizens have a right to examine the evidence, compare outcomes, and demand accountability—from pharmaceutical companies, from food manufacturers, and from government agencies alike. This is not to say that everyone will take the time and make the effort to see what the Florida studies have revealed. Education requires participation, but that would not excuse the glaring fact that food manufacturers would rather not have us know what is in their products.
The politics of our health is often, at times, in the wrong hands. But we, the public, cannot just accept this. We must be vigilant. We owe it to our family, our community, and our country to appreciate federalism as Brandeis defined it. It is a citizenry willing to learn from what happened—only six brief years ago—so that the next crisis does not unfold the same way.
- If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. —James 1:5
Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash
