A Hard No on Pandemic Amnesty
Yes, there will need to be some forgiveness, but there should be no hasty forgetting of the Covid debacle
There has already been a robust response to Emily Oster’s flimsy Atlantic piece, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” in which the Economics professor counsels forgetting of Covid decisions: “Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.”
Oster is careful not to specify which “we” made the choices that turned out worst—the lengthy school closures that harmed young people’s learning and well-being, the forced shuttering of small businesses that led to bankruptcies and associated devastation, the border stoppages that caused severe economic disruption while doing nothing to end the pandemic, the mass firings of unvaccinated workers long after it was known that vaccination did not prevent Covid transmission—and she isn’t willing to forgive all who made, in her estimation, “wildly irresponsible claims.” Here she’s replaying the Democratic fantasy that President Trump advised drinking or injecting bleach to cure Covid, “reminding” us that “the public health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to.” What she remembers wasn’t true—see Trump’s actual words here—which makes it doubly difficult to take seriously her “build back and move forward” mantra.
As many responses to Oster have made clear, it also isn’t true that “deep uncertainty” prevailed during the spring and summer of 2020—and later—when so many damaging edicts were enacted. As Jeffrey Tucker shows, it was known by February 2020 that the world was dealing with a virus that primarily endangered the elderly and the ill, and that might responsibly have been dealt with through “focused protection,” as Jay Bhattacharya advised in March, and as he and the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration later elaborated. If only “the public health community” had spent time and energy not mocking Trump but listening to independent scientists and whistleblowers (rather than censoring, silencing, and professionally destroying them), we could well have avoided some of the disasters that occurred, including the long-term suspension of our civil rights and flagrant violations of the Nuremberg Code.
It's hard to credit Oster’s conviction that most officials who acted “mistakenly” did so “in earnest for the good of society.” Most of us have seen, by now, videos showing public health officials’ strange backflips about the efficacy of masking, and we know that many told lies about the lethality of the virus to gin up fear and compliance. Alas, investigating their oft-shifting claims and hurtful decisions would be so complicated and politically fraught as to make it highly unlikely.
Equally as unthinkable, perhaps, is addressing the effective mobilization of citizens to accept and even champion the authoritarian measures, as happened so notably in my home country of Canada. But I believe this must be undertaken.
Most ordinary citizens here followed orders enthusiastically, or at least diligently, staying at home when told, donning their masks (even in their cars or while jogging), standing on the designated markers, following arrows in stores, putting Covid signage in their windows (“We’re all in this together!”), joining the nightly pot-banging and horn-blowing, and flocking to the Covid testing and vaccine stations, all in pursuit of a community safety that common sense alone should soon have shown to be misplaced: Covid-19 spread despite the restrictions, and the pandemic has lasted far longer than any previously known one.
Some Canadians did far more than obey, becoming purveyors of Covid rectitude with a holier-than-thou conviction of public-spiritedness that quickly turned defensive or hostile if challenged. “I’m doing this for you,” I heard a woman at the bank lecturing the teller, who had allowed his mask to slip beneath his nose, “And all I’m asking is for you to show the same concern for me!” As would come to be the story about vaccines, also, emphasis was placed on how the act of compliance allegedly protected others rather than the doer, thus becoming an indubitable sign of moral probity—or lack thereof.
Some Canadians went on the lookout for evidence of inadequate public caring. During the first lockdown, an accusatory announcement was placed in the elevator of our condo building, which concluded “You endangered us all!” after someone in the building had allowed non-resident children to visit and play in the open-air courtyard. In fact, nobody at all had been “endangered” by children playing outside, but the seduction of righteous outrage was already proving near-irresistible for some.
My husband, who could never quite believe that he was mostly alone in his refusenik stance—and who had quickly ascertained the low case-fatality numbers as well as the (literally) gaping size difference between a tiny virion particle and the mask weave—received many irate rebuffs to his friendly grousing. “It’s a small price to pay if it saves lives!” was a standard huffy response to his comments on the worse-than-pointlessness of it all. As it turned out, far more people under age 65 died of lockdown measures in Canada than of Covid-19, but this fact was barely reported and put not a dent into public eagerness for more, and more stringent, mandates.
Once, while grocery shopping with my mother in early 2022, I was roundly lectured on my poorly-worn mask by a woman who, after delivering her rebuke, complained to her companion about how exhausting it was dealing with the recalcitrant. In fact, she seemed to find it exhilarating. We were in a massive superstore in which, apart from this woman, I had never exchanged a word or stood close to anyone for more than a few seconds.
There is no question, of course, of punishing such people for their aggressive compliance, most of it ostensibly well intentioned, even when it turned nasty. But the fact of that compliance—and its darker underbelly, the collectivist fury it also marshalled—surely deserves some attention.
A law-abiding citizenry is often a good thing, except when the laws are misguided, unjust or evil; and far too many Canadians have been, over the past two and a half years, seemingly indifferent, complacent, or cravenly eager in response to government and police overreach. Principled doctors were persecuted for faithfulness to the Hippocratic Oath, and Canadians raised no outcry. Pastors were targeted by police for operating soup kitchens, and Canadians looked the other way. Many people lost their livelihoods due to arbitrary business closures and vaccine mandates, and their protests fell on deaf ears, or provoked disgust and mockery by officials (while stores like Costco and Walmart, packed to the gills, never lost a day’s business).
Children playing outdoor ice-hockey were harassed and threatened by police, and Canadians shrugged their shoulders. Millions of unvaccinated Canadians were barred from public life for months, and most Canadians thought this was a good and necessary precaution; quite a few complained when the “vaccine passport” system was finally lifted. The universities, self-styled sites of free inquiry, contestation, and debate, fell immediately into line with state authorities, parroting government talking points and almost entirely uninterested in the ethics of vaccine coercion. Mainstream news outlets were even more rabid in their fear-mongering and suppression of alternative perspectives, and Canadians in the main seemed grateful to be told what to do and whom to hate.
And hate we did. At the height of the public campaign to demonize the non-compliant, Canadians were unabashed in wishing illness and death on the unvaccinated in an outpouring of officially tolerated rancor that some newspapers reported with satisfaction. The Toronto Star created a front-page spread out of “Let them die” statements, and seemed to find the simmering fury quite understandable. Unabashed scapegoating was affirmed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in last fall’s election campaign deliberately stoked fearful anger against the allegedly “far-right, anti-vaxx fringe” who were, as he claimed, “lashing out with racist, misogynistic attacks,” spitting on the healthcare workers who nonetheless cared for their undeserving selves, and “putting at risk their own kids, and […] our kids as well.” It was already well known, as a result of clinical studies and simple observation, that vaccination did not prevent transmission of the virus; yet such bigotry became widespread. In the midst of the outpouring of contempt, an Angus Reid Institute poll found that a near-majority of Canadians “don’t think unvaccinated should have the same priority for medical treatment,” an astounding proposition promoted and elaborated by many once-sober pundits.
The ease with which “polite Canadians” succumbed to such uncurbed vilification was remarkable, especially given the relatively low threat Covid-19 actually posed to the general public. How would we react in case of a more lethal virus or other true national crisis? The last two and a half years indicate, if nothing else, how paper thin is Canadians’ cherished self-image as a tolerant, “inclusive,” and fair-minded people. Whether one looks to Mattias Desmet’s mass formation hypothesis or other explanations of the drive to enemy-formation, some sustained discussion of the phenomenon is warranted—if not to firm up resolve to prevent it from happening again, at least to puncture Canadians’ profoundly undeserved self-satisfaction.
The behavior of these people is absolutely inexcusable. There will be no forgiveness for the neighbor who picked a fight about my unvaxxed status stating the unvaxxed don't deserve hospital treatment if they get sick because "our front liner workers" were so overworked (which was always a lie in the US. Not one single ICU bed was added to any hospital during the entire "pandemic." )There will be no forgiveness for the DNC employee across the street who actually started taking his solo am constitutional alone in the street sporting TWO MASKS on his ridiculous face. I do not have to live among such idiocy!
No, there will be no forgiveness even for my partner who has more or less seen the light and agreed to get no more jabs, kind of, but still can't admit that the gov't had ill intent in pushing the jabs. (BTW, Forgiveness is NOT necessary for love, another modern misconception.)
What is the point of forgiveness after all? Forgive and forget is what that author in the Atlantic piece means. But forgiveness simply prevents one from wasting one's energy on hate or resentment. It has nothing to do with "forgetting," and I will NOT forget that they abandoned their reason and humanity at the drop of a hat. They must be punished and hounded as far as the law will allow. When they admit their guilt (Ha! Ha!) I'll open the door to having a relationship with them again, but not before.
Personally I've started saying to clowns still donning masks as the store as I pass them by "You'll get sick wearing that mask." Last time I did this the guy seemed shocked to hear someone say that to him. Good. These people need to be shocked out of their bubbles in this manner before the next "pandemic" is presented and they go along with it eagerly again.
It is NOT ok to act like an unthinking robot in public, inflicting needless harm on others without reason.
I never got the vaccine myself and people insist that I'm going to die without it. Nearly three years on, I'm still waiting for death to come knocking on my door to tell me my time is up.