NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE W ho really determines our pandemic response? Is it public-health institutions and experts, or the public that they advise? Who is allowed to get major questions on the pandemic “wrong”? Just public-health officials, or the public at large, too? Who has freedom of opinion and the ability to express and deliberate in the modern public forums?

The question is about to become more acute, as we enter what Joe Biden called a “dark winter” during a nationwide peak of hospitalizations for COVID-19, but with hope of effective vaccines coming in the spring. Many conservatives have tried to tamp down the anger at …