Pandemic Amnesty? Not So Fast

Emily Oster argues in the Atlantic that it’s time to put arguments about Covid policy mistakes “aside and declare a pandemic amnesty.” After all, feelings were high, there was enormous uncertainty, and mistakes were made. Some people ended up being wrong, some people ended up being right, but getting it right was mostly a matter of luck rather than knowledge and foresight. People had to make “hard calls” with “imperfect information.” “We didn’t know,” Oster intones.

Of course, this is all nonsense. People aren’t mad about the “hard calls” that were made in good faith, where decision-makers exercised due diligence and made sure they had the best available information. What people are rightly angry about are the willful distortions of fact, the deliberate deception by public health authorities, the collusion between media, government and even employers to punish and ostracize anyone who questioned the dominant narrative, the abuse of science and data in order to stigmatize and punish the unvaccinated, the relentless propaganda that divided families over vaccines and masks, the unscientific vaccine mandates that destroyed lives and livelihoods, and the vicious proposals mooted in print, on television, and on social media to deny medical care to anyone who was unvaccinated. The entire establishment - not just Emily Oster - wants us to forget about all of that. Indeed, amnesty’s etymology is rooted in notions of “forgetting” or “forgetfulness.”

But rather than forgetting all that has happened and just moving on, we need a full and honest account of the deliberate injustices (not mere mistakes) perpetrated by the powerful upon the powerless. And even once a full account has been drawn up, it’s hardly our place to grant forgiveness on behalf of those who have unfairly suffered the most.

The Vaccine Injured

It’s not our place, for instance, to forgive the people who have neglected the vaccine-injured like 14-year old Maddie De Garay. When she was 12, Maddie was enrolled in the Pfizer trial for 12-15-year olds and had a severe reaction to her second shot. She endured excruciating gastrointestinal pain, convulsions and seizures, and for a long period was barely able to eat. Today, Maddie is unable to walk or sit upright without support and still suffers from her vaccine injury. To this day Maddie’s doctors, as well as Pfizer and the FDA, have largely ignored her, dismissed her symptoms as psychosomatic (i.e. it’s all in her head), and have ultimately stood in the way of her receiving the care and treatment she needs and deserves.

Maddie’s suffering isn’t simply due to mistakes or good-faith efforts that got things wrong. Maddie has suffered because her injury was inconvenient to powerful people at Pfizer, at the CDC and FDA, and at major medical institutions like Cincinnati Children’s Hospital where the Pfizer trial she participated in was conducted. Her injury undercuts the “safe and effective” narrative adopted like a mantra by almost every establishment institution in the country. Billions of dollars and the reputations of self-important people like Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins depended on successful, trouble-free trials (or the appearance of successful trials). Acknowledging that Maddie was severely injured – paralyzed, in fact – by the Pfizer vaccine would have jeopardized all of that, and so it had to be swept under the rug.

Her case has been well-publicized on social and alternative media. Maddie’s mother, Stephanie De Garay, has done interview after interview to tell their story. In the summer of 2021, Maddie and her mother appeared at a special hearing for the vaccine injured convened by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. And yet, not a single major media outlet has covered Maddie’s story. Indeed, almost all of the news media coverage of Johnson’s hearing was critical, suggesting that the event amounted to misinformation or else emphasizing that vaccine injuries were “rare.” Indeed, thanks to a compliant and dishonest media, discussion of vaccine injury is still taboo. Media are reluctant to talk about it, and when they do they always emphasize that vaccine side effects are “rare.” Until the vaccine injured like Maddie de Garay get the respect and treatment they deserve, amnesty and forgiveness are out of the question.

Deliberate Deception by Public Health Officials

Before talking about amnesty, we also need to hold public health officials accountable for their deliberate deceptions. And this isn’t about mere disagreements about murky science – this is about willful falsehoods for which we have the receipts.

To take just one example, in the summer of 2021 the CDC and the White House began a relentless propaganda campaign around the idea of a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” People like Rochelle Walensky (who until recently was isolating at home with Covid) went on television seemingly every day declaring that 98 or 99% of Covid cases were in the unvaccinated (1 or 2% in the vaccinated). This statistic was a deliberate deception meant to support vaccine uptake and to pressure the unvaccinated to take the shots. With tens of thousands of “breakthrough” infections having already been reported in the public domain at that point, simple arithmetic showed that these percentages were fiction. As it turned out, the CDC was calculating the percentage of breakthrough infections as a total of ALL infections going back to 2020. In other words, the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative was counting infections from the 12 months before vaccines were even available. Why would we be granting amnesty for deliberate deceptions before those responsible have even been held accountable?

Vilifying the Unvaccinated

The “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative was part of a much larger propaganda campaign to vilify, ostracize and punish the unvaxxed. Public health officials, actors, journalists, tv personalities, politicians, and President Biden, all participated in the campaign. Their rhetoric was often vicious, unscientific and inhumane. On September 9, 2021 Biden gave a live address to the nation in which he announced new, Federal vaccine mandates, but also blamed the unvaccinated for the ongoing pandemic and for causing vaccinated people to die: “We’ve been patient,” Biden declared, “but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.” “For the vast majority of you who have gotten vaccinated,” Biden continued, “I understand your anger at those who haven’t gotten vaccinated.” Reckless at best, Biden’s rhetoric against the unvaccinated veers dangerously close to the UN’s definition of “incitement” in international law. How can we talk about amnesty when Biden and others supporting this kind of divisive, hateful rhetoric have not been held accountable?

This propaganda campaign by the White House, the CDC and other public officials, which was rooted in deliberate misinformation, was in turn picked up by journalists and tv personalities who took things in an even uglier direction. To cite just one of dozens and dozens of examples, Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times wrote a column in January of this year titled “Mocking anti-vaxxers' COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes - but necessary.”

Hiltzik argues that the unvaccinated deserve to die of Covid:

[T]hose who have deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others, and end up in the hospital or the grave can be viewed as receiving their just deserts.

Hiltzik goes on to argue that the unvaccinated, especially those who oppose vaccine mandates, should be mocked and denied sympathy in order to teach others a lesson:

It may be not a little ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents… But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled… Nor is it wrong to deny them our sympathy and solicitude, or to make sure it’s known when their deaths are marked that they had stood fast against measures that might have protected themselves and others from the fate they succumbed to… There may be no other way to make sure that the lessons of these teachable moments are heard.

The article’s URL (https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-01-10/why-shouldnt-we-dance-on-the-graves-of-anti-vaxxers) suggests that the column’s original title was “Shouldn’t we dance on the graves of anti-vaxxers?”

Ironically, in 2020 Hitzlik was telling his readers to “Be afraid. Be very afraid” of the vaccines the Trump administration hoped to make available before the 2020 election.

Shortly thereafter, Hitzlik tweeted: “Trump’s plotting for a pre-election vaccine will kill people.” Is now really the time to talk about amnesty for people who argued for mocking the dead and dancing on the graves of the unvaccinated?

The vaccine injured continue to be ignored and vilified by their own doctors, public health officials have yet to be held accountable for their deliberate deception and betrayal of public trust, politicians like Joe Biden have yet to answer for their hateful and divisive propaganda against the unvaccinated, and vicious editorialists like Michael Hitzlik continue to write for major publications like the Los Angeles Times. We cannot even begin to talk of “amnesty” until these people have been held accountable and have expressed sincere contrition for what they have done.

For the next few weeks, we will be publishing a series of stacks highlighting the many politicians, public health officials, journalists, university officials and prominent doctors and scientists who deserve to be held accountable for their misdeeds.