“The sleep of reason produces monsters.” – rd etching in the Los Caprichos series) The tyranny of unreason does not stop at the borders of politics. It spreads its tentacles to every aspect of human life. In his first post-Trump media briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci provided a telling summation of the existential costs of Trumpism. “The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence what the science is,” the immunologist said, “…it is somewhat of a liberating feeling.” It is a sentiment many a medical practitioner in Sri Lanka would understand. Days after Donald Trump left the White House, hopefully forever, Sri Lanka’s Health Minister was diagnosed with Covid-19. Even in a cabinet of outstanding ineligibles, Pavithra Wanniarachchi stood out, a peerless yes-woman who seemed to promote disease rather than health. On the behest of her masters, she obfuscated the gravity of the pandemic, ignored scientific opinion, punished medical doctors for non-adherence to official untruths, bowed before generals and followed charlatans peddling supernatural nostrums. The pictures of her devoutly throwing a pot into a waterway or eagerly consuming the Kali concoction were emblematic of the regime’s anti-science, regimented, and inane response to the pandemic.