Abstract

Pandemics have a way of humbling those with recognized expertise for responding to them. The current COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into relief medical and other experts' uncertainties about models for predicting the spread of cases and deaths, patterns of symptoms and morbidities associated with the virus, the responses of various publics to official health directives and unofficial (in cases harmful) advice, the longer-term economic and political fallout of the ongoing pandemic, the proliferation of conspiracy theories, and so on. At the same time, pandemics like COVID-19 have a way of reminding us that expertise, like uncertainty, can be a fluid, distributed quality, as we have looked to and learned from the experiential knowledge of patients and their caregivers, the cultural insight and documentation of artists of various types, the ingenuity of fellow citizens in designing novel and work-around forms of protection, and other sources not typically associated with medical expertise. Indeed, we can readily point to the harms of authority figures or institutions assuming too much agency and failing to listen to, leverage the knowledge of, and coordinate responses with others.