@SteveBellovin @blakereid @mattblaze @paulgowder With plugins, footnotes work pretty well and are easier in some ways. These are the Zotero plug-ins (which work with Juris-M) that I use with VS Code:
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mblode.zotero
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=notZaki.pandocciter
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rubenvandeven.zoterolens
The biggest shortcoming, imho, is that Markdown doesn't have document footers. So, footnotes appear as endnotes in the document until you convert the document. That's not too big of a deal, though. 1/