Coinciding with the Great Reset is the Great Gaslight, whereby folks who peddled the numerous lies since the onset of Covid attempt to pivot without accepting responsibility for their actions so as to move on from the past two years. As the Frankfurt Declaration and numerous grassroot efforts have successfully pushed back both in America and around the world and the inflationary impact of Covid spending wreaks havoc across the globe, support for Covid tyranny is no longer fashionable. From politicians to pastors and regular people, everyone is attempting to distance themselves from that which they vehemently supported.
The Atlantic’s columnist Emily Oster penned her latest column “LET’S DECLARE A PANDEMIC AMNESTY” sparking mockery across the internet. Oster claims to be a data driven Professor at Brown University and has written on Covid previously. The Atlantic is a worldly publication, yet the same narrative being peddled by Oster is the same being peddled by many within the church. She even employs the same tactics and logic implemented by Big Eva.
In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks. Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”
Opening the column, Oster points out the extent she bought into the falsehood and the measures she had taken, even brainwashing her children into the lies. Unfortunately, this tale is not outlandish and became all too common at the time, yet she portends that this is the damage that must be “forgiven” and extended amnesty. It will be noted that Oster was extreme in her support for the Covid tyranny, something she omits in her column.
These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.
I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University on COVID. We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty.
One of the fascinating and disturbing trends is this notion that “one did not know” so therefore the tyrannous lockdowns and mandates were necessary. This is the equivalent of using ignorance as an excuse for decision making. If one does not have enough information, then one cannot make a properly informed decision. The more extreme the decision, the greater the burden of proof necessary to justify the proposed solution. Moreover, the information on the deadliness of the virus was known, but was obfuscated by hyperbolic models and media pandemonium. It was known that the virus disparately impacted the elderly at the time. It was known that one could not shut down an economy at the time. It was argued that the cure would be worse than the disease at the time. Instead of engaging in discourse, the mob declared that those who opposed lockdowns were selfish and wanted to kill people. This is before digging into the revelations that the US government both created the virus and suppressed early treatments that they had knowledge of in the spring of 2020.
Some of these choices turned out better than others. To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming. But 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.
Here she attempts to rationalize the wickedness of the mob by lamenting the failures of school closures and distance learning, yet the “both sides argued in good faith” mantra was never true. Like many workers even now, the teachers did not want to return to their jobs and were content languishing from the comfort of their homes while the students suffered. It was the teacher unions who pressured CDC guidance for the same reason, because unions are designed to support more pay for less work.
Another example: When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.
Despite calling for amnesty, Oster maintains that the vaccines work. In fact, she lays the blame on J&J which was a distant third place in market share amongst the three jabs. When the jabs were first issued, people were bragging about getting Pfizer or Moderna due to their perceived quality over J&J which the government temporarily shelved and has since scapegoated off the market as of May 5, 2022. Of the 507.12 million doses administered in the US through 2021, J&J administered 17.6 million, not even 5% of doses. There was never widespread preference for the “one and done vaccine” despite the obvious selling point, though many who were coerced into getting jabbed chose this option while the cultists chose Pfizer and Moderna. In order for there to be forgiveness, there must be repentance and an acknowledgement of truth. Believing the lie of the vaccines being safe and effective is a dealbreaker, as it remains steadfast in the false narrative that was the primary driver for lockdown policies. The entire government response, via Operation Warp Speed, was designed to bring a vaccine to market through Emergency Use Authorization, which necessitates that no currently FDA approved medication are within the treatment guidance.
Obviously some people intended to mislead and made wildly irresponsible claims. Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad. Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.
In calling for amnesty she uses the most hyperbolic and false claim made against Trump regarding the use of bleach. Big Eva pundits often use hyperbole to conceal the more prevalent claims. Things that were called Misinformation were inexpensive treatments like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, the inefficacy of masks and the vaccines, the now near-universally accepted reality that the virus came from a US funded lab in Wuhan, and the surge in excess and sudden deaths. But bleach was the worst of the misinformative claims. They were not made in good faith, but these lies actively suppressed truths at the expense of human life. In this, Oster reveals she has learned nothing.
Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information.
In every instance, the pro-lockdown and pro-tyranny crowd was proven wrong, yet she plays into the same narrative that some people were right for the wrong reasons. Big Eva plays the same tactics, though they also throw in tonal concerns.
The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. 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. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.
Being wrong on the pandemic was a moral failure. Succumbing to panic was a spiritual issue. When Moses was atop Mount Sinai, the Israelites panicked, throwing out all they had been taught to build a golden calf and partake in an orgy. It did not matter that they were scared or were ignorant or were just following what Aaron instructed them to do. Their actions were sinful, just as taking up the idolatry of Branch Covidian. People revered Fauci, became Cuomo-sexual, and destroyed their familial relationships over the status of a vaccine. Do not remember the people who lost their jobs over a poisonous injection, suffered adverse reactions, or died because they “got something wrong.” Hospitals denying kidney transplants and life saving treatment against court orders—no moral failure there, according to Oster.
Being on the correct side the entire time, the scorecard is not something to gloat over. In fact, quite the opposite. Those who have been correct the entire time, pushing back on the false narratives, often suffered, whether in their relationships or their employment. Many moved churches. There is no joy in being right when the damages are incalculable.
We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge.
Like Big Eva, Oster articulates forgiveness without accountability, while still saying that those who peddled whatever she calls misinformation be left chastised. She is calling for amnesty because the Overton window has shifted against Covidstan, yet she also wants to dictate the terms.
Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.
Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.
Who could have foreseen this problem—oh yeah, those who were against Covidstan the entire time. Nevertheless, the failures of public schooling have only been exasperated, and many have pulled their children out of public schools. Yet the democrat politicians do not want to focus on these questions, but instead teach Critical Race Theory (which Oster supports) and sexually indoctrinate children in the classroom.
Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up. Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach, and politicians will need to consider school mandates.
Herein lies the real crisis of the post-Covid world: people are not vaccinating their children. If anything, Covid tore open this narrative as the failed and poisonous jabs inflict damage by the day, with sudden deaths amongst healthy adults being commonplace. Instead of offering sympathy, she is pushing mandates for childhood vaccinations as a legitimate and unifying policy proposal.
If anything, it is an opportune moment to question the vaccine narratives that we have been sold for generations. Because of the lies and gaslighting on the Covid jabs, the efficacy and safety of the childhood vaccination schedule should be subject to scrutiny. Is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome caused by vaccines? Are the autism claims farfetched? Asthma has already been linked according to a CDC study. These are conversations that need to be had. Just like with Covid, we cannot expect an honest government as the same individuals and medical boards are the same ones rubber stamping Pfizer and Moderna’s MRNA poison for mass consumption. The same goes to be skeptical of medical professionals.
The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. 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.
In attempting to rebuff the renown axiom on history, she contrives the concept of an ill-defined doom loop, which is really a third-way attempt to counteract how history is beginning to remember the year 2020. Moreover, she wants to memory hole how brazenly totalitarian she was in 2020 and well into 2021.
There is no sharing a country with those who believed one should lose their livelihood for refusal to take an ineffective substance. This wretched woman favored vaccine passports and discrimination. This is the Great Gaslight, where all these pundits and figures who were vitriolic towards those against Covidstan attempt to rebrand and erase the past, avoiding accountability for their actions. Whether it is Ben Shapiro, Daniel Darling, Russell Moore, etc. their pivots and gaslighting attempts should be rejected.
Ignorance is not an excuse for adopting the religion of Branch Covidianism. However, to those who have admitted wrong, which would include John MacArthur and even Dan Bongino, they should be commended for their conduct.
