Pandemic Amnesty? Not a Chance.
Amnesty’s out of the question – let’s get started on the pandemic reckoning.
Photo: BBC
So here we are in late 2022, well into a post-pandemic period of reflection on the past two-plus years of lockdowns, injection mandates, forced masking, hysteria and keeping distanced from most other humans. Some of us lost our jobs, many of our children lost nearly two years of in-person learning, our favorite restaurants and stores went out of business, and we were forced into a hermit-like lifestyle separated from loved ones with the real possibility that we would never see them alive again.
It’s pretty clear by now that most (if not all) of the aforementioned measures taken, allegedly to mitigate COVID dangers, were ineffective, unnecessary, and extremely damaging. The immense destruction of our mental and physical well-being, coupled with the trust of our institutions being completely shattered, has long-term ramifications that we are only beginning to experience.
How many of you were prohibited from attending the funeral of a loved one (*raises hand*) knowing that others in positions of authority were attending events and dinners in direct violation of their public orders? How many of you had your kids denied in-person learning, knowing that the governor of California’s kids did not miss one day at their private school? Did you lose your job because you refused the experimental COVID shot and its obvious, provable health risks that we all knew about from the beginning? If you still have your job, are you pleased with the current decline of in-person contact, restrictions on business travel and at-home work demands that burn additional hours away from family even though they’re steps away?
This is a conversation that we absolutely must have, and it has nothing to do with forgiveness. We must examine with clarity what happened, who did it and where this is going if we are to prevent such a travesty in the future.
Are We Really Going to Forgive and Forget?
I read an article in The Atlantic, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” in which a Brown University professor practically begs for everyone to “forgive one another for what we did and what we said when we were in the dark about COVID.” The essay begins with an anecdote in which the author’s family is hiking outdoors in homemade masks, and her four-year-old son screams “SOCIAL DISTANCING!” at another child for getting too close to him.
“These precautions were totally misguided,” she said, “but the thing is: We didn’t know.”
That passage is from the article’s first paragraph, and it continues with the same kind of gaslighting and self-interested nonsense that brought us to this moment. The implication here is that the people who were injured by this tyranny are holding up the healing by not offering the wrongdoers forgiveness. “I didn’t know, so you should forgive me” doesn’t cut it.
“In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing.”
Luck had nothing to do with our pandemic response. There was much of what we knew in March 2020 and before:
• The lethality of COVID was clearly higher among the elderly and those with preexisting conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure,
• Natural immunity exists and delivers longer term protection against airborne viruses than experimental injections,
• Forcing a medical procedure on people is a human rights violation,
• Isolating entire populations is harmful and cruel,
• Shutting down manufacturing causes supply chain disruptions which, in turn, threatens economic stability,
• Keeping children out of school is damaging to their educational and social development,
• Panic, mandates, and stigmatization in the name of public health is counterproductive and creates societal hostility and chaos.
Given these factors and others that we knew back in March 2020, the wrongs committed in the name of “public safety” were most certainly moral failings. Our leaders implemented policies that ran counter to everything we already knew about mental, social, developmental, and immunological health, as well as proper pandemic management. And they did it without even considering alternative measures rooted in common sense and with respect for individual rights.
Remember the Mandates
The author offers more self-serving insight. “The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat…Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people wracked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.”
It is totally offensive to equate the genuine harm and death of real people with that of a “scorecard.” Pandemic “choices?” Masks were mandated, testing was mandated, jabs were mandated, travel was restricted. These “choices” were imposed on us.
And it’s not “gloating” that holds us back; it’s the obvious lies that were spread coupled with the mandates that were issued, and those who pushed those lies and mandates refuse to concede they were wrong even after the truth has been exposed. We won’t get anywhere until the people who inflicted these lethal, catastrophic errors on society acknowledge the damage they caused.
It’s not about who “got it right,’ it’s about basic human decency. The longer people refuse to admit their errors, the longer the societal pain will continue.
We trusted our leaders and institutions to keep us healthy, safe, and prosperous in the face of a pandemic. They did just the opposite, they then falsely claimed they didn’t know any better, and now they are asking that we let it go and move on.
It’s Time for a Reckoning
We don’t need a pandemic amnesty to move society forward, we need a pandemic reckoning. We need to know what decisions were made and by whom. Because they did not listen to those with practical and better informed solutions, the people who made those arbitrary decisions need to be held accountable.
We also need new safeguards in place to prevent such irresponsible and damaging decisions from being implemented. And lastly, we need a genuine commitment to ensure this never happens again, which begins with independent, objective, and transparent inquiries throughout the entire pandemic timeline.
The author concludes: “We need to learn from our mistakes and let them go.”
“Learning from our mistakes” requires humility and honesty, neither of which our leaders and institutions possess. They have proven to be devoid of any shred of integrity as they currently function. If we never want this to happen again, we need to outright replace those who made these decisions and prosecute them according to the purposeful damage they inflicted. There have to be consequences if we wish to avoid this in the future.
Pandemic amnesty’s out of the question – let’s get started on the pandemic reckoning. It’s our only real way forward.