What Emily Oster said in The Atlantic and why it is not acceptable

[Updates below!]

In my previous post I was focused on making sure that the religious leaders and thinkers who enabled Covid lockdowns and vaccine injustice were included in a summary rejection of Emily Oster's call for amnesty for that (by no means over) episode.

Her arguments are so spurious that it boggles my mind. But I encourage you to take the 12 minutes necessary to watch Doug Wilson's careful fisking of her piece, with his emphasis on what the true objection is to what happened (and her role in it) -- censorship and loss of freedom: 

It's not over. Medical trust is, as Wilson says, at a low point. Just one example, but an important one: The law [in California] authorizes regulators to discipline physicians who deviate from the "contemporary scientific consensus."

It's all forgiveness and harmony with Oster now, when mid-term elections loom, but what about then:

Justin Hart explains how Emily Oster did real harm to public discourse during lockdowns.

I'll update this post when I have more commentary links to share.

UPDATE: Do watch this short video from Leila Miller, in which she points out the dangers of "Truth Inversion" -- failing to put first things first. As exemplified in the abortion struggle and not least of all, the lockdown debacle. 

The Coast Guard is being particularly intransigent about vaccine mandates. Good servicemen are hanging in limbo over their jobs and pensions. Yet, the USCG is also in a crunch, recruitment-wise! And is offering up to $50,000 signing bonuses for even the most menial positions. Wonder why that would be... 

The U.S. Coast Guard is offering up to $50,000 signing bonuses in an effort to bolster recruitment, after the number of guardsmen has plummeted, in large part due to the military's strict COVID-19 vaccination mandate.

According to internal USCG documents obtained by Fox News Digital from October detailing fiscal year 2023 workforce planning, "Culinary Specialist," or "CS," level recruits could receive bonuses up to $50,000 each.

Active-duty Coast Guard Lt. Chad Coppin called the $50,000 CS-level bonuses, which would involve positions such as cooks, "absolutely unheard of."

 "This means the USCG response to future disasters like Hurricane Ian will suffer, and lives will be lost due to lack of personnel, a readiness issue that the USCG is voluntarily compounding... overall, the USCG is short over 2,700 members," Coppin said.

"We are not meeting recruiting goals, and a service that was once difficult to get into is now offering $50K bonuses, increasing age limits and lowering standards in order to try and fill billets," he continued.

According to an internal "Retention & Recruiting Study" from September by the Office of Strategic Workforce Planning, the vaccination mandate has led directly to personnel shortages.

 

My husband's article.

The great tragedy of the lockdown was not caused by the people who made innocent mistakes—like wearing cloth masks or wiping down counters—in the mistaken belief that they were preventing the spread of the virus. The tragedy occurred because, once the appointed experts had issued their edicts, no one was allowed to question them. From the early days of the Covid era, there were eminently qualified scientists offering reasonable arguments against the lockdown policies. (See the Great Barrington Declaration, which has now drawn nearly one million signatures.) But they were not given a hearing. On the contrary, they were treated as pariahs, in many cases stripped of their academic credentials. How about an amnesty for them, now that their ideas have been vindicated?

 

"Are you concerned that [on a reality TV show with Matt Hancock] we are seeing a more explicit conversation about coronavirus and its impact than you'll hear in Congress or in Parliament" -- Russell Brand on "moving on." Full disclosure, I am not as willing to let individuals off the hook as Brand seems to be! But his video here has many important points about the implications of memory-holing the events of the lockdown.

No Covid amnesty for bishops, theologians, et al., either

In her infuriating and ignobly equivocal article in The Atlantic, Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty, Emily Oster hides her own culpability* in lockdown matters by begging for universal amnesty, so that we can "try to work together to build back and move forward." 

"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."

We knew, Emily. And we tried to tell you. Ask yourself what happened to our voices.

"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." 

With this anodyne statement, hopefully trying to cast the "sides" as equally culpable, as if one side were not in power, silencing and harming the other, Oster fails to mention further developments warned against by honest questioners, at great cost to themselves and their reputations, that the lockdowns and shots would prove to be devastating (the real, if soft-pedaled, meaning of the quote above).

For many reasons, not least having to do with how much we let ourselves know in the future, we should not move on, despite this transparent effort from a now-spooked ruling class to impute bad motives to those they attacked and harmed, hoping to evade a reckoning.

But there's another class of experts who also must not be allowed to fade into the background. 

And that is Catholic authorities and experts who followed those in the government and the media who now say "we didn't know" -- but who at the time were obviously silencing discussion (let alone criticism).

These Catholics insisted on following calls to mask and vaccinate, using religious authority, theological arguments, and the virtue of obedience to harm persons, families, and consciences. 

This group includes various bishops' conferences, bishops, vicar generals, pastors, parish administrators, theologians, and ethicists, not to mention random pundits, columnists, and podcasters. Many are left-leaning, politically, but some are conservative and even quite traditional. 

All abdicated their duty to defend personal autonomy and bodily integrity, as well as justice and right reason. 

Astoundingly, this cohort, this unholy cabal, ratcheted up fear and shut down our churches. Oh, some of them may have not wished to go that far, but their complicity in one or more aspects of the regime undermined their discomfort.

On a matter of utter prudential judgement on medical and social matters -- the Covid response -- that required information and only then, consent, by the persons in question, these religious experts and authorities abused their position and the respect accorded to them by the helpless faithful, and presumed to make judgements about matters outside their proper sphere of providing teaching of objective principle. 

They pompously rejected or provided the pretext for rejecting religious (really, conscience) exemptions from tormented people, their brothers and sisters in Christ. (My husband Phil Lawler wrote a book about all this: Contagious Faith - affiliate link.) 

Never will I forget images of children sitting at desks, once school did reopen, swathed in plastic, masked, behind plexiglass -- for the cowardice of our moral leaders. 

Many young people missed meeting their best friend or spouse; are now drug-addicted; many committed suicide. Many families lost a loved one and did not have the opportunity to say goodbye or comfort them in their last hours. 

For these Covid fellow-travelers, too, who enabled all this, there ought to be a tribunal and a requirement for apology and reparation. I don't know what that tribunal would be. Let their consciences accuse them.

The important point I want to emphasize in this matter of "moving on" is that the harm is not all in the past. The economy is in tatters (with the fallout being borne by the truly poor, near and far away). So is the Church (ditto). 

Fathers of families still are without jobs and pay, anguished and burdened by their means of provision and protection being taken away. Mothers are still traumatized by not being heard, by giving birth wearing a mask and alone, by being kept inside with young children who needed to go outside. Children have been subjected to loss of education, friendship, and well being (including physical well being, as immune systems are weakened by lockdown). Children in some places still wear a mask. Many of us can't go to the doctor without one (though I won't wear it).

Even today, the fearful wear masks outside or while driving alone, their psyches permanently scarred. 

I can't even go through the whole list of wrongs and evils -- it's too long. And it's not over.

But anyone in the Catholic Church who went along with lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masking, and/or social (and religious!) pressure ought to be ashamed. All along, we told them how it would end. Now even the ones who tried to suppress the truth see that it's coming out. Will they too ask for amnesty without any sign of repentance? For shame.