Makeshift morgues were necessary back in 2020, when COVID-19 lacked a vaccine and was killing so many people that hospitals and funeral homes couldn’t keep up. But two years later, they were still in use in Baltimore—for a different reason. In February, according to news stories at the time, at least 200 bodies from the medical examiner’s office sat in refrigerated truck trailers parked inside a parking garage for weeks. There was simply nowhere else to put them—because of a shortage of forensic pathologists.

There were so few forensic pathologists in the city—medical doctors who perform autopsies to examine sudden, unexpected, or violent deaths—that autopsies were backlogged. Bodies couldn’t be examined, and laid to rest, as quickly as t…