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Note: The answer grid will include every letter of the alphabet.
BY EMILY COX AND HENRY RATHvON

You’re indicating liberty and freedom. I look at it as a public health measure to prevent people from dying and going to the hospital. . . . Right now we have about 60,000 infections a day, which is a very large risk for
a surge. We’re not talking about liberties. We’re talking about a pandemic that has killed 560,000 Americans.

—Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, in a televised hearing in which he responded to assertions from Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) that mitigation measures such as mask mandates and social distancing recommendations were threatening “Americans’ liberties” (April 15)
ACROSS

1. Illness caused by Coxiella burnetii (2 wds.)
5. Of bones and skeletons
8. Conveying acidity to the gustatory system
9. Membrane around the brain (2 wds.)
10. Edema's effect
11. Having winglike processes
12. Germ killer
16. Baby in the outback
18. End of a eukaryotic chromosome 20 Mass of nerve tissue
21. Home of the larynx and pharynx 22 The last word in flowers?
23. Smallest bone in the human body

DOWN

2. Predator-prey complex (2 wds.)
3. Like the flu, or like many memes
4. Gecko, skink, or krait
5. Long-armed Sumatran, for short
6. Areas of the forebrain
7. Whom to ask for "My Interesting Science Skill"
13. Chilling agent, as liquid nitrogen
14. Archipelago components
15. Cause for employing an otoscope
17. Giraffe's smaller cousin
18. Biome in which conifers are prevalent 19 Bipolar episode

We now have a highly polarized political environment in which partisans find it convenient to discredit science that is inhospitable to their views
. . . . Science didn’t create the polarization; it is a victim of the polarizing environment.

—Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, talking to Chemical and Engineering News about the US public’s relationship with the scientific community in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic (January 25)
© JONNY HAWKINS