One of America’s top pharmaceutical executives has warned that a growing climate of anti-intellectualism is blighting the global response to Covid-19, and questioned whether policymakers are capable of preparing the public for the next pandemic.
David Ricks, chief executive of Eli Lilly, said this was especially true in the Anglo-Saxon world where scepticism about expertise had become a driving force behind vaccine hesitancy and a failure to implement proper controls to tame the pandemic, including mask wearing.