The geography of the US’s mishandling of COVID-19: A commentary on the politics of science in democracies

Abstract

During the pandemic, many prominent global leaders and scholars have called for placing science above politics. This commentary argues that such rhetoric dangerously oversimplifies science and politics as insular from democracy and geographical context. The theory of co-construction from science and technology studies reveals the pandemic’s geographic intersection with other threats to democracy, such as rising inequality and authoritarianism. Since COVID-19 figures to be central to the politics of the future, the field of geography helps to contextualise the importance of problematic trends that hinder the capacity for democracies to respond to present and future crises.