Covid-24

November 21, 2024

By Jim Towey

Inflation and immigration may have been the first concerns voters shared at the exit polls. But I think beneath those issues was a protest vote from a public jaded by the failures, if not lies, of its leaders and leading institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Americans were forced to choose between either following the Covid experts and their mandates, or pushing back against masking, vaxxing, and other dictates. The polarizing effect of this unnecessary choice was felt in every corner of our country.  

America has not recovered from Covid. The Wall Street Journal’s Tuesday piece, “How Science Lost America’s Trust and Surrendered Health Policy to Skeptics,” explains how a non-expert, non-credentialed man like Robert Kennedy could be nominated to stand at the summit of public health policy. The author, Liz Essley Whyte, points out that voters are still angry over the Covid measures the Trump and Biden administrations took at the behest of Covid czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Biden backed him to the bitter end.

And here we are, four years later, with science and public health in the same doghouse as Congress and the mainstream media, undeserving of public confidence. I find it fascinating that only at the end of the pandemic did Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health and wingman of Fauci, admit that he failed to consider that the measures they pushed “actually, totally disrupt peoples’ lives, ruin the economy and has many kids kept out of school.”

I would add to his list of sorrowful consequences the funerals, weddings, graduations and family gatherings missed, the death beds unvisited, the jobs lost for the unvaccinated, the worship services banned, and the damage to the mental health of children and seniors alike by unnecessary, draconian “prevention measures.”

Remember their orders?  Stay at home. Shutter your schools. Wear masks. Stay away from other people. Show your vaccination card if you want to fly or go to a restaurant or game. Do as you’re told! This polarized Americans precisely when unity was badly needed.

Perhaps there should be a national archive that compiles some of the craziest Covid-prevention practices. My favorite? The removal of rakes from sand traps and the golf ball washer devices at tee boxes on a public golf course in Basye, Virginia. I’ll bet that turned the tide on transmission rates!

But when you ask Americans to do or accept stupid things, like standing on social distancing stickers in a bank lobby, putting on masks outdoors, or watching sporting events with fake fans, you have to expect confidence in public health and science to suffer. This is what happens when experts turn into autocrats, brooking no dissent, stifling all contrarian scientific thought, clinging to political marching orders.

Ironically, it was the non-expert class, the regular folks without the specialized credentials, the ones with ample common sense and critical thinking skills, who figured out Covid long before the nation’s elite did.

We knew the virus came from Wuhan, China, that gain-of-function research there amped up the potency of the virus, and that it jumped the wall and came to America. We knew this when our senses of taste and smell disappeared for days, when the illness lingered for weeks or months. We knew this was no ordinary virus.

We figured out that Covid wasn’t a 21^st century version of the Black Plague which wiped out entire households, and that the elderly and immune-compromised were the ones at risk of hospitalization and death.  We knew this by the spring of 2020.

We figured out that the vaccines didn’t prevent transmission or infection. We knew Biden’s “pandemic of the unvaccinated” slogan was malarkey, as he might say. The virus afflicted the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.

And by actually getting Covid infections, we figured out that natural immunity was as effective as vaccines, even though public health authorities completely ignored this centuries-old certainty. Have you noticed how few Americans get the Covid booster shots these days? This tells you the damage the Centers for Disease Control brought upon itself by following politics, not science.

So how do we fix this mess?

Just as sunlight is a great disinfectant, so, too, is the light of truth. As I wrote some time ago, here and here, there must be a national, non-partisan commission established that sheds light on who did what, what went right or wrong, and what are the lessons we learned. Most important, we need an acknowledgment from our leaders of any actions that were unethical, any “noble lies” told, any gagging of contrarian views, and an apology for them.

This is how you remove the shrapnel embedded in the body politic so that healing can begin. Voters saw this need all too clearly. Their cry, as at creation, is a simple one: Fiat lux. Let there be light!

(The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)