When I first read the post, I thought the NEJM was the one dying of the leadership vacuum. The challenges to established scientific publications have never bee

When I first read the post, I thought the NEJM was the one dying of the leadership vacuum. The challenges to established scientific publications have never been greater. Then I scanned the actual article and found that it was lamenting the failure in US medical and public health leadership during COVID, which it attributes wholly to US government failure, in the Federal government in particular. Lots of assertions, no actual data. As close to a rant as I’ve ever read in a professional journal. Given that Massachusetts is now 2nd in COVID deaths per capita out of the 50 States, and the Massachusetts Medical Society publishes NEJM, it’s no surprise they would want to deflect blame onto, well, anybody other than the Massachusetts medical community. They don’t consider that maybe there really isn’t any blame to assign. It was a tough situation with limited knowledge and a requirement to act regardless by all well-meaning parties. If there is blame, it will take a multiyear postmortem to untangle everything and identify lessons learned. I have no idea who the audience for this editorial would be. The sort of voter who would read an NEJM editorial wouldn’t be swayed by the simplistic arguments made, one way or the other. They would just wonder why the editors of the NEJM would publish such a thing. And then I realized that I had interpreted the title of the article correctly all along.