In Regards to COVID Amnesty...

In figuring out forgiveness for those who deserve it, and holding those accountable who require accountability.

Several people have weighed in on this recent (and now viral piece) written by Brown University economics professor Emily Oster, published in The Atlantic on Halloween.

The title alone makes it seem rather bombastic, and it makes sense why so many people have criticized this piece, as if to say that those who tormented us all with the weight of government tyranny may want to end it as quickly as it came on.

“No hard feelings for making you feel like a social leper, losing your business, losing your job, harming the kids through social isolation and addiction to social media. It’s all good, right?”

Now, I sort of didn’t weigh in on this piece for the fact that so many others have, yet at the same time I feel as if my perspective on things have changed, and may be slightly different than others.

So I decided to finally read the piece, and quite frankly I was surprised, mostly for how short it was.

I think the reaction to it has been met with far longer, and more detailed responses than the piece itself. Interesting.

Even weirder is how vacuous this piece was. OK, so Oster masked her kids, she dabbles a bit in how children have been greatly affected by the lockdowns (something she appears to have been against by her own words), and a little touch on vaccines and misinformation. And that’s about it.

Really.

By all accounts, this seems to have been a self-aggrandizing piece more than any piece that provides anything of substantial value.

If anything, it has that air of wanting to criticize those on “the other side” without going so far as to saying it, with hints of some people misleading public health and how some people may have been right for the wrong reasons (I think I’m getting a bit of Scott Adams vibes here).

But because of how vacuous of a piece this was I was rather surprised at the response.

Many people have taken to raise arms against Oster or The Atlantic, seeing this as a piece that is meant to whitewash all of the wrongs committed by the those in power over the course of the pandemic.

In a Wall Street Journal piece written by their Editorial Board in which they rebuke The Atlantic’s op-ed it starts by outlining how Oster’s piece has been used by lockdown zealots as a way to not be held accountable:

Believe it or not, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten on Monday tacitly acknowledged that keeping schools closed during the pandemic was a mistake. Miracles happen, apparently. But she also now wants parents—especially if they’re voters next week—to forgive her and her political allies without seeking an apology or holding them accountable. Sorry, that lets them off way too easy.

“I agree,” Ms. Weingarten tweeted a link to a piece in The Atlantic by Emily Oster, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty.” The article argues that Americans should forgive experts and government leaders for their mistakes during the pandemic.

I find the last sentence to not exactly be a proper characterization of forgiving experts or government leaders. Again, it feels more like Oster wanting forgiveness for Oster more than anyone else.

Strangely, the WSJ piece somewhat contradicts itself by criticizing Oster’s remarks that not much was known in the summer of 2020, yet citing Florida’s reopening in August as an example of what should have been done:

However, she adds, “in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.”

That’s awfully generous to Team Shutdown, which included all of the progressive great and good and nearly all of the media. Yet it was clear by summer 2020 that children were at extremely low risk for severe illness. They were also struggling with remote learning, as were their parents. All efforts should have been made to reopen schools, as Florida did in August 2020, and to keep them open.

Ironically, as far as I am aware team progressive was also highly critical of lockdowns, mostly because they argued that college was where many students of the LGBT community could be themselves without facing stigma or domestic violence if they were forced at home.

However, it’s also quite clear such concerns were easily obfuscated for COVID paranoia.

It’s also not the point of this piece to nitpick the WSJ piece, although I do find it rather lacking in its appeal.

There’s also this piece in The American Conservative which, again, makes mention of Emily Oster (and The Atlantic’s) defense of the so-called experts:

Emily Oster is an economist at Brown University. She wrote her Atlantic essay to ask the other smart moms of the world permission to forgive herself for masking her kids. But the Atlantic published her little essay to obscure a critical point: experts should be held to a different standard than the rest of us. Some people are downstream from “the experts,” and during the Covid responses they did what they thought they were supposed to do, as best they could tell. Neurotic rule followers are annoying, but if there are any in your family you should forgive them; the relationship is more important than “I told you so,” and hopefully they can admit they were wrong, that they listened to the wrong sources. 

I actually find this piece from Micah Meadowcroft to be in-line with some of my thoughts on the matter. Although he makes comments about the experts (which I would argue can only be tenuously inferred in Oster’s piece—again, a more self-aggrandizing piece rather than anything of substance), he also makes note that Oster doesn’t really speak much for the so-called experts more than she speaks for people in similar circumstances as herself:

The Atlantic’s amnesty essay blurs those two categories, for Oster is both a private citizen and a public expert admitting she got things wrong. But she can only represent, only speak for, the class of experts in general, not the public health experts who formulated our pandemic response or the authorities who implemented it. Her apology to herself, to her children, to her readers, is not theirs. In actually considering what the piece suggests, an amnesty for disaster, Oster and her personal record on the Covid response hardly matter. 

I think this excerpt explains why I find the response and reactions to Oster’s piece somewhat bewildering.

I have no idea who Oster is, so why exactly do I find her comments to mean much to me personally?

And for many people Oster doesn’t serve as a person of authority on COVID affairs, but more so a person to which people can concentrate their qualms on as being an example of a person who wants “COVID amnesty”.

She puts herself in the spotlight by almost serving as a conduit for all things that have been wrong with how Fauci, Walensky, and the rest of their ilk have acted throughout this pandemic.

Essentially, my beef isn’t with Oster.

I have no idea who she is or why she matters: it’s with the others.

It’s with the medical establishment, pharmaceutical representatives, and the government officials who saw it fit to follow in lockstep ridiculous policies that were never rooted in evidence.

Oster only serves as a method to which we can let our anger and resentment out since those who we have real anger towards tends to be shielded by both the media and by government.

This all almost serves as a distraction against many of the real problems we are facing. Rather than make an example out of Oster, we should be reminded of the actual issues going on and who are rightfully deserving of actual criticism.

---

On last New Year’s Eve I made a post about forgiveness, and whether I could forgive the people who went along with all of the atrocities these past few years.

The pertinent part would probably be this excerpt:

I had no initial thoughts on writing this post, and I certainly did not stop and think about how relationships will unfold after the Pandemic ends.

But then I came across this recent episode of libertarian/comedian Dave Smith and his co-host/comedian Robbie. In one segment of this podcast, Dave Smith discussed living your life and moving forward by spending precious Christmas time with family. However, Robbie lamented on the fact that it’s not so simple as getting back together with family, making a comment that he used to see his sister’s children until she got “weird” about COVID and the relationship now is not quite what it once was (The timestamp for the below video is around 29:10 but Robbie’s comment is not made until around 35:45).

[…]

It’s for this reason I am struggling with the idea of forgiveness as so many people are. It’s the reason why such an innocuous comment from the podcast has resonated with me (although I would argue Robbie’s takes tend to resonate with me in general) and possibly many others. It’s hard to witness the anger and dehumanization that so many people have shown to one another, which makes it even more difficult to comprehend how one can heal the damage that has been wrought.

That family member you see now may have been one who wished you dead for not being vaccinated. Another may have pushed for masking school children, forcing your kids to spend over two years never seeing the actual face of their friends. For those who have been pushed over the edge, there’s no way to come back with a “no hard feelings” to try to make amends.

Reconciliation is what’s needed more than ever, and yet I and others find it so difficult to try to reconcile with those who’s views feel so diametrically opposed to our own. It’s why I find the idea of forgiveness in these times so difficult, and yet may be one of the most important approaches if we are to move on after the pandemic.

A note that the video was apparently privated, likely due to YouTube’s policies and running affoul of arbitrary guidelines.

I should also be reminded that I myself didn’t deviate from the COVID narrative during the first few months. I was up there with those who were bleaching cardboard boxes and doing things that I should have otherwise known to have been completely absurd.

But over time I realized how ridiculous all of this was, especially when a local news station had a report about whether one could track COVID on their shoes. I mean, was that really a concern? It was things like that which began to cast doubt as to what was going on.

In Oster’s case she seemed to have come around on the school closures much to the behest of her lockdown zealot friends and cohorts.

We should also be reminded that governor Ron DeSantis did, in fact, lockdown Florida within the first few months of the pandemic. It was only after he held a roundtable meeting, with one notable figure being Dr. Jay Battacharya- one of the coauthors of The Great Barrington Declaration- did DeSantis start opening up Florida in a broader context.¹

Essentially, many people who may have argued that things have gone too far may not have been arguing that at the beginning.

Applause for those who saw the writings on the wall, but I’ll be honest and say that I wasn’t one of those people.

And so, in thinking about all of this, I wondered to what extent those of us who got it wrong at the beginning should be forgiven, in much the same ways that we should forgive others who went along with the charade for as long as they have.

My general sentiments are that, at the end of the day, it’s tiring to always be angry.

It’s exhausting to have to worry about the people who wished that I lost my job for not being vaccinated.

It’s tiring to think about the employers who eventually let me go or me wishing any ill-will onto them for acting in such a way.

In the same ways I feel COVID fatigue, I also feel fatigued from being angry all of the time. There’s far much more to life, and sometimes life doesn’t always have to be filled with sadness, even if Substack recommendations appear to push those sentiments in particular (the company we keep, I suppose).

In reflecting on my comments from New Year’s Eve I’m not sure forgiveness is the right answer more than just feeling indifferent at this point. Indifference in having to make a show of reconciling rather than just moving on sans any formal display of apologetics.

Because, once again, the issue at hand is not the friends and families per se, but the people who chose to weaponize our friends and family against us. The people who saw it fit to choose how we live our lives and pit us against one another for their own power and amusement.

I think Meadowcroft puts it best in how he ends his article:

Forgive your family. Even forgive authorities who say they are sorry and seek to make amends. But fire them, too. Throw them all out. “Getting something wrong” might not always be a moral failing, but it is a professional failing, in an expert or public official. They failed at their job. They should not be allowed to keep it. If they cannot be gotten rid of, stop up your ears to them. Whatever “hefty element of luck” went into getting things right, asking the right questions, before the consensus caught up, it is something we should all want more of. The score must be kept if we, the public, are to know who to trust, who to listen to.

The fact that some of those who were most right most often about Covid the disease and how to respond to it do not have the credentials Atlantic readers might expect should remind us those credentials were only ever a proxy for insight, for prudence, for leadership; they do not bestow it.

Well, maybe not the forgiving the authorities part, although I agree with the rest of the excerpt. There’s much to say about “expert opinion” and why I’m critical of credentialism, but I’ll save that for another post.

---

As we approach the holiday season let’s be reminded of the values in family and friendship. Let’s forgive and hold close the ones who really matter to us while also acknowledging who it is that we take issue with.

Remember that it’s not good to hold onto anger. Being angry can actually be detrimental to one’s own health, including one's immune system.²

Pick and choose your battles, and know which ones are worth fighting. Know who is deserving of amnesty and who isn’t.

With that, I’d like to hear your opinions on the matter, and what you think of the piece and the reaction to it. As always, all opinions are welcome, but try to show some civility to each other.

---

If you enjoyed this post and other works please consider supporting me through a paid Substack subscription or through my Ko-fi. Any bit helps, and it encourages independent creators and journalists outside the mainstream.

Click on the image above or visit the website at https://ko-fi.com/moderndiscontent

1. By all accounts the only state to have never closed was South Dakota due to governor Kristi Noem. I generally find it strange that she doesn’t get the credit that she is due for actually staying open.

2. Brod, S., Rattazzi, L., Piras, G., & D'Acquisto, F. (2014). 'As above, so below' examining the interplay between emotion and the immune system. Immunology, 143(3), 311–318. https://doi.org/10.1111/imm.12341