Do doctors have too much power? The influential French writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy believes so. In his response to COVID-19, The Virus in the Age of Madness, Lévy complains that physicians have been transformed into “supermen and superwomen”. They have been endowed by politicians and publics “with extraordinary powers”. This bestowal of power is strange. For, Lévy argues, COVID-19 is nothing unusual—“that sort of disaster has always been with us”. What is different this time is how we have reacted. He calls it an “epidemic of fear”. He bemoans “the victory of the collapsologists”, “this extraordinary global surrender”. The respect society has accorded doctors is based on “several misconceptions”. First, “there is something a little absurd in the blind confidence we place in them”. The multiple failures and U-turns in policy—over testing, personal protective equipment, and advice on face masks in schools—surely prove that medicine has been about correcting its mistakes, not delivering new truths. Second, policy makers assume that doctors and medical scientists are “singing with one voice”. Not so. The science of COVID-19 is “a battlefield”, “a non-stop quarrel”. The “renowned doctor…is naked under his white coat”. And third, there is “the question of hygienics”. Health has become a public obsession. The “will to cure”, the call to sanitise, has alarming overtones of eugenics. Some doctors give the impression they are enjoying this health emergency. They wish to extend it in “an incestuous union of the political and medical powers”.I don't agree with Lévy that there has been a deliberate effort by physicians to amplify “medical power”. I believe the opposite: that now is the moment for the medical community to strengthen its voice and influence. It's time for governments to end their rhetoric about being “guided by the science”. I don't mean the advice of scientists should be ignored. I mean that we don't elect scientists to lead nations. We elect politicians to offer and deliver a vision for their country. For many, maybe most, countries today, the stark fact is that governments have no vision and no plan for the future of their nations. COVID-19 has erased strategies for societies. Here is where the voice of medicine should be clearer and stronger. Any plan for national renewal must be guided by the lessons learned so far from the human consequences of this pandemic. Illness and death have been highest among those who are older, those living with chronic disease, and those who have been working in front-line public services. The closure of schools has put a particular burden on the lives and futures of children and young people. A shadow pandemic has hit women and children who have suffered rapidly rising levels of domestic violence. And this coronavirus has exploited, accentuated, and worsened pre-existing social and economic inequalities.Specific policies and programmes to meet the urgent needs of children, young people, adults living with chronic disease, key workers, women, and seniors could lay the foundations not only for economic recovery but also for resilience in the face of future shocks, pandemic or otherwise. At the heart of this vision would be a new settlement to achieve intergenerational equity. Fairness across the generations exists in two dimensions. First, COVID-19 has revealed how brittle our society is at the extreme ends of the age spectrum, from schools to care homes. Second, the pandemic has emphasised the importance of creating stronger communities for generations yet to come. Cutting across all of these concerns is inequality. The existing disparities in opportunities and outcomes for the least advantaged citizens are transparently unacceptable. This pandemic has dehumanised us. We have described the effects of COVID-19 in terms of mortality statistics, epidemiological models, and league tables. The biographies of those who lost their lives to this coronavirus have been largely lost. But they can be recovered by fashioning a new vision for nations that puts their lives and their sacrifices centre stage. There will, of course, be vigorous political debates about policies to advance the welfare and wellbeing of these vulnerable communities. But those debates will at least be forged in the service of a coherent, determined, and optimistic plan for national rejuvenation. Doctors and medical scientists have an important voice in shaping those plans. Too many still remain silent.