Pandemic Unmasked

A recent article from the Atlantic (Let's Declare A Pandemic Amnesty) centers around an apology of sorts i.e. the author -- a COVID co-professor at Brown and one-time champion of those draconian measures to which we were subjected -- now sees those measures to have been "misguided." But we didn’t know, she suggests, so let’s move on, sorry about that, water under the bridge.

The second article frames the matter in starkly unapologetic terms (No, Let's Not: Perpetrators of Pandemic Authoritarianism Cannot Be Forgiven). Nice try, it asserts, but some did know. This was not a case of a pandemic overreaction but rather one of active suppression of readily available information.

Point/Counterpoint: two vastly different takes on the appropriateness of those state actions. Now that things have settled down a bit, how one responds to those two pieces may reveal lots about how one sees the rights and responsibilities of an individual within a democratic Republic.

Let’s refresh ourselves about some of the details of that hypnotic frenzy known as the Covid narrative: fines for the unvaccinated; house confinement; forced quarantine; the temporary removal of parental custody for the refusal to be vaccinated. Remember the lockdowns, the school closures, the mandatory masking, the punishment of an entire class of people who even questioned the efficacy and wisdom of taking a rushed, experimental vaccine.

We devoted an entire session in that initial outbreak to address the potential benefits versus the costs of those then-proposed measures (Lockdown: Governors Playing God). What has been the more-recent experience -- a threshold question being how do you personally perceive the risk as of today? At one end of the spectrum there is barely a mask in sight within most restaurants and bars, of course that may be due to a younger sampling.

The follow-on question, then, is whether society-at-large is assimilating the essence of the second piece i.e. that the COVID-19 is mild, virtually impossible to control, represents no threat to the young, and that lockdowns provide minimal medical benefit. A similar “upgrade” of consciousness goes to the efficacy of vaccinations to prevent the transmission of the virus: the growing consensus is that its power is limited to the protection of the carrier only. Both points would seem to be highly relevant in the ongoing policy debate.

Regard this introduction as a catalyst for discussion rather than some advocacy piece as we mine the past, not in the spirit of second-guessing, but as guidance for the future. Among the take-aways:

Notice the ease in which a whole population might be vulnerable to an orchestrated information campaign; there is some evidence of an active suppression of views/research that ran counter to the official narrative, especially during the early years; another term for this phenomenon was discussed in our MM 11/6/17 Gaslighting;

Extraordinary power within a Republic can be assumed (presumed) by way of simple appointment (reference MM 5/7/18 Land Of the Lawless); while the rationale may be deference to special expertise, the potential danger is in the development of a fiefdom, the only protection against abuse lies in the power of Congressional oversight (now ongoing);

Perhaps a cynical observation, but the power and influence of “special interests” can not be ignored in the pandemic response; more specifically, the power of the pharmaceutical industry was made manifest throughout the unfolding the opioid crisis;

This entire pandemic episode, along with so many other “challenges,” may ultimately have the effect of hardening the population within the grand cycle we’d addressed in MM 3/20/17 The Fourth Turning.

All in all, though, we return to the original point that how we view the whole pandemic experience might well be a window to how we see the rights and responsibilities of an individual within our great Republic.