An op-ed in the Atlantic on Monday titled, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” and the sub-headline, “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.” had many folks seeing red!

Now I’m sure all of you have your own thoughts when it comes to this, here are some more to chew on.

For starters, the piece was well written and frank, the op-ed’s author was Professor Emily Oster, she was a champion of both masking and lockdowns as an early response to Covid. She showed little hesitation in resorting to utilizing “the science” as a weapon against anyone who questioned government protocols. However, in fairness to her, this mother of young children quickly came around to arguing for school re-opening, and later un-masking, which at times made her the brunt of criticism by both sides.

Oster began her “mea culpa” by giving readers an inside look at what life inside an affluent family looks like: when hiking outdoors, she taught her kids parental ‘hand signals,’ used whenever someone approached on the trail, to politely alert her kids to firmly fasten their ineffective cotton face masks.

Once, Oster recalled, when a little girl got “too close” to her then-4-year-old son on a bridge, the boy screamed “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

To her credit, Oster now admits her son was “totally misguided,” yes, I know, us peasants would say junior was “wrong” but remember folks, these are elitist intellectuals and admitting that would be like, admitting they were wrong and therein lies the problem. Of course, where did “junior” get his ridiculous idea from, yeah “the apple doesn’t’ fall far from the tree!”

Oster frankly admitted that outdoor transmission was “vanishingly rare,” and that her family’s cloth masks (made out of old bandanas) wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But, she explained, the thing was: THEY DIDN’T KNOW.

That seems to be Oster’s main defense of her behavior and actions, in other words, during the fog of covid uncertainty, well-meaning folks “on both sides” advocated for and against pandemic policies like masking, lockdowns, and so forth, often contentiously believing what they were doing was right.

She explained that, in the fog of war, EVERYONE was guessing, and in hindsight, some people just got lucky with their guesses. “The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive,” she wrote. “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.”

Then she reached the crux of her argument, “We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty.”

I can certainly see how that could set a few folks off, just a little bit! The reactions from “the deplorables”, you know those that didn’t go along with “the narrative” was immediate and fiery!

So why all the outrage, well on the surface you could say it was her call for amnesty, but reading her piece, she was equating amnesty more to agreeing to a temporary truce, not so much forgiveness for what had happened. I think what really pissed folks off was her failure to address the biggest difference between what she described as the two sides, the ‘right’ side and the ‘wrong’ side.

If Emily were sitting here in front of me, or those like her, I would say to them, our side, you know, the right side, never tried to shut your side up. Our side never tried to cancel and delete you for advocating your ‘wrong’ side. Our side never punished you for disagreeing, like by cheering as you lost your job or were denied hospital procedures.

Professor Oster, you’re gravely mistaken if you believe that “disagreement over policy” is what lit and fans the conflict till this very day.

No madam, the mistake that we really need to wrestle with is not that you and your cohorts were intellectually wrong about pandemic policy. That can be forgiven, however, the sins that people, including yourself, committed against their fellow citizens who disagreed with them, is the one that’s monumental.
Strangely, Oster herself missed this critical distinction, since she began her article with that painful confession about her 4-year-old “misguidedly” yelling at a little girl.

Dear Professor, it was the YELLING. Not the difference of opinion, that was wrong! The yelling invoked “a moral superiority” and that is what lies at the heart of the issue.

Having said all that, I must agree with Emily on one point and that’s the simple fact that we are going to have to figure out how to deal with the majority of people who were wrong about pandemic restrictions. Let me be perfectly clear though, I’m talking about the majority of people who complied with the government narrative BUT did not support or revel in harming those who disagreed.

That’s the key difference. We must demand accountability of those who openly advocated PUNISHING those of us who turned out to be right. But people who just yelled “social distancing,” or, those who simply criticized someone about wearing a mask or still choose to wear one today, I see mainly as victims of a massive government psyop campaign, too.

Anyways something to think about, let me know your thoughts!