Amnesty... for What, Exactly?

Will you even say? Do you even know?

“The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.”
-Terry Pratchett

Yesterday Emily Oster published an essay at the Atlantic arguing for amnesty for the “mistakes” made during the pandemic.

It was not well received.

emily oster's no good, really bad, terrible idea

Emily Oster proposes “a pandemic amnesty,” suggests that “we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID”

Apology Games

I am no doubt missing some, but these are those that happened to still be open in a tab.

I recommend reading Emily’s essay. Read it, and then consider that this is the same woman who tweeted out this:

Preventing people from traveling or working, totally a good idea. Just don’t shame them. Shaming people might be a mistake, but no where in her essay will you find Emily saying “maybe that whole illegal mandating that people be put out of work if not willing to take an emergency therapeutic that doesn’t even do what it originally was claimed to was a bad idea.”

el gato malo, eugyppius and Mathew Crawford do a great job tearing into the madness that this call for amnesty entails. I want to merely add on a bit.

Apologies need to be specific to be meaningful.

Note what Emily points out as mistakes: wearing cloth masks on a hike, closing beaches, keeping schools closed too long, and recommending people inject themselves with bleach.

The Substack essays linked above tear these examples apart, as we knew perfectly well at the time that these “mistakes” were wrong to make, but were willingly made anyway. We knew the young were barely affected and only the aged and infirm threatened by COVID in the first few months. We knew outdoor exposure was going to be close to zero. Cloth masks were as clearly useless as injecting bleach based on years of research, and those who recommended them knew it as well as those recommending a needle full of cleaning fluid.

More importantly, however, is the paucity of the list itself. Sure, one can’t list every mistake made, but Emily’s list seems a little… incomplete. Is requiring people wear cloth masks even in the top five worse mistakes made?

How about demanding people be vaccinated or denied the right to work when the vaccine neither stops infection or spread?

How about forced lockdowns for weeks and months despite decades of epidemiological evidence that it wouldn’t work?

How about pushing vaccines on those with less than a 1% chance of death from COVID, vaccines with a distressing tendency to injure or kill through myocarditis and stroke, while lowering fertility?

How about constant gas lighting on the effectiveness of vaccines while destroying the careers of those who highlight the inconsistencies?

Does the Top 5 COVID Mistakes list go those four, then “And making everyone wear cloth masks for no reason?” Or should we make room for “Locking down young people in such numbers and for so long they committed suicide at shocking rates?” Or maybe “Making illegal and unconstitutional power grabs to force our preferences on our fellow citizens?” What about “Constantly engaged in illegal and unconstitutional censorship of discussion and scientific debate that cast light on the lies pushed by our government agencies, executed through paid partnership between government and private media companies?” How about “Poured huge amounts of borrowed money into the economy at the same time we shut down goods production, resulting in the highest long term inflation in decades?” That one seems relevant to an economist like Emily.

Does Emily even think those were mistakes? Or is it just the cloth masks, school and beach closures, and bleach things?

This is why apologies need to be specific, why mercy demands confession, why forgiveness must be asked for: The guilty must know that what they did was wrong, and must understand why, or else they will do it again.

Simply saying “I am sorry you are upset” is nothing more than lamenting the result of an action rightly taken. It accepts no shame for the decision, shows no understanding that it was wrong, demonstrates no growth that implies one wouldn’t do the same thing again.

Emily Oster is claiming that those who spent the last two years demonizing those who disagreed and taking monstrous actions to force them to comply with official and arbitrary dictates did nothing procedurally wrong. “Sorry some of the ideas weren’t the best, but look, people make mistakes and if some of you were ruined financially, lost your careers, were injured or outright killed, well, what can you do? We had to force everyone to do something whether they liked it or not, right?”

Is Emily really asking for amnesty over the mistake of masks? For what crimes, exactly, are you asking mercy, Emily?

Of what are you guilty? Do you know the extent of what you have done, what you have advocated for and cheered on?

The past three years have seen some of the worst crimes against the people of the USA that we have seen for some time. The innocent demand justice. Let the guilty ask for mercy. Above all, let us make sure it doesn’t happen again.

A good start to make sure it doesn’t happen again would be to catalogue all the mistakes and crimes of these three years and remove all who partook from office at the least, and jail time for those most egregious¹. Those who championed these mistakes and crimes need to have their reputations updated accordingly.

Shame is not enough for all that was done, and is still being done, but it is a good start.

1. As well as criminally corrupt. I have not even touched on the question of conspiracy and bribery of officials. Where does all that grant money go, Tony, and how much made it back to your pockets? Hmm?