In the spring of 2020, the world was faced with a new, highly contagious and deadly disease, and at the time of writing, it is not clear what the long-term consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic will be. Epidemiological, medical and public health expertise rapidly became salient due to the potential life-and-death consequences of scientific technology and expertise. From its outset, the importance of knowledge and scientific expertise in government responses and national well-being provided a stark example of a more general underlying trend in the political economies of advanced industrialized capitalist democracies. Though without the same universal life-and-death stakes, changing technologies of production have been increasing the importance of knowledge as an input to economic progress and prosperity for the past forty years.