In 1982, Harold Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska premiered in London. Though typically letting a work speak for itself, Pinter acknowledged the impetus for this one-act play: the decade-long epidemic of encephalitis lethargica that began in 1916. Pinter became transfixed by this “medical mystery” after reading neurologist Oliver Sacks’ 1973 book Awakenings about those still suffering in coma-like states. The experiences of these patients, their families, and physicians fit nicely in Pinter’s oeuvre — linking his (so-called) “comedies of menace” and “memory plays” (or, here, a “no-memory play”). Examining recurring Pinteresque themes (even if he and Sacks misconstrued some of the medical details), the three-character Alaska explores memory, consciousness, and the self within the messiness of illness, institutionalization, and intimacy. Deborah, now a middle-aged woman whose brother-in-law doctor awakens her with L-DOPA, confronts a bewilderingly changed self, family, and world and many lost years. Having been neither awake nor asleep, a girl or a woman, alive or dead, she hesitantly concludes: “I think I have the matter in proportion.” Today, post-COVID, Pinter’s play could be read as a Platonic allegory of pandemic policymaking: Deborah, a sleeping public fleetingly aroused to the dangers of infectious disease; Dr. Hornby, a devoted but destabilized public health system caught between patients and policymakers; and sister Pauline, a “witty” and “greedy” political system still wondering: “Shall I tell her lies or the truth?” Read this way, Pinter’s Alaska serves as an object lesson for U.S. public health policymaking in an age of disinformation and discounted communal goods. Analyzing the characters, metaphors, and themes from Pinter’s play as a modern “Allegory of the Cave” provides insights into the potentially competing interests the public, public health professionals, and U.S. policymakers face when addressing public health risks.