We Need Covid Accountability, Not Amnesty

The same Democrats who pushed for imprisonment, fines and even removal of custody of children simply for being unvaccinated now want to make a peace offering.

At the beginning of 2022, I made the prediction that we would see the end of vaccine mandates and that the general populace’s deteriorating tolerance for nonsense would force a pivot in how the absolutely hysterical media covered Covid.

Fast forward eleven months and the same crazed media lot, most recently characterized by The Atlantic, is now pleading for mercy from those it shunned and ridiculed during the pandemic, under the guise of asking for “amnesty”.

“We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID,” Emily Oster wrote this week.

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Oster’s plead for the decency that her ilk failed to offer up to most Americans during the throws of the pandemic comes at a point where the Covid narrative has been all but lost by the Democrats and the mainstream media.

There have been several recent large wins for the unvaccinated who had the constitution and backbone to stand up for themselves throughout a year of being constantly berated and ferociously scorned as second class citizens.

A majority of the media and Democrats had demanded that these people be removed from society and generally subject to scorn and ridicule. Now, in a moment that many of us knew would eventually be coming, apologies are being made around the world for how the unvaccinated were treated.

As Fox News wrote last week:

“The premier of Alberta, Canada, said she is working on a plan to pardon residents who were fined or arrested over breaking coronavirus protocols, and apologized to unvaccinated Canadians who faced ‘discrimination.’“

In New York, a Supreme Court judge recently reinstated all employees who were fired from their jobs for being unvaccinated:

The court found Monday that "being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting COVID-19." New York City Mayor Eric Adams claimed earlier this year that his administration would not rehire employees who had been fired over their vaccination status.

To extrapolate further insult from injury, the basis for the original New York City firings, the idea that vaccination prevents the spread of Covid, turned out to be a lie pushed by everyone in the media, from yacht-owning pharmaceutical CEOs to the supposedly “anti-corporate greed” President of the United States.

Just days ago we witnessed the stunning revelation that Pfizer never tested its Covid vaccine for transmissibility before proclaiming publicly that the vaccine protected against transmission.

Finally, Italy announced days ago that “doctors and nurses suspended from work because they are not vaccinated against Covid-19 will soon be reinstated,” according to Reuters.

This all comes after the media was forced to finally admit that natural immunity - ignored completely until pharmaceutical companies sold billions in vaccines - wasn’t a myth, earlier this year.

The Great Covid Pivot Of 2022: Natural Immunity And Other "Conspiracy Theories" Have Magically Become "Fact Checked" Mainstream Narrative

And after the U.S. Senate all but confirmed this month that the origins of Covid were likely from a “research related incident”, not natural causes.

Senate Report Concludes Covid Came From "Research Related Incident"

In other words, the gears have slammed into reverse and the wheels are falling off the narrative once used to strike fear into the hearts of the malleable. The only question now is how humiliating the walkback can possibly get for the left.

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The funny thing is that during the pandemic, the way the vaccinated viewed the unvaccinated was totally different from how the unvaccinated viewed the vaccinated.

The vaccinated weren’t ridiculed by the unvaccinated, they were mostly just left alone - a course of action the media could have taken with the unvaccinated, respecting their choice as a personal one. But instead, victim mentality took over, and it became an argument about getting vaccinated for everybody else and not being selfish.

“Do it for your neighbor!”

“From each according to his Covid ability…”

This snowballed into what can only be described as mass hysteria, wherein many Americans whipped themselves up into such a terrified hypnotic frenzy that they found themselves clinging to big government to impose their will, advocating for the same draconian and fascist-sounding policies they always claim to be fighting against.

For example, Ramussen reported in January 2022 that Democratic voters supported the following Covid policy ideas (my annotations in bold, Rasmussen in normal text):

• Fines for the unvaccinated: Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters would oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

• House arrest: Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

• Imprisonment for questioning the vaccine: Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.

• Forced quarantine: Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

• Stripping people of their children: Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s much more than twice the level of support in the rest of the electorate – seven percent (7%) of Republicans and 11% of unaffiliated voters – for such a policy.

During Covid, the left wing media also accused the unvaccinated’s pleas for civility of being “fraud” and supported openly mocking the deaths of the unvaccinated.

The LA Times wrote in January 2022:

As I observed then, pleas for “civility” are a fraud. Their goal is to blunt and enfeeble criticism and distract from its truthfulness. Typically, they’re the work of hypocrites.

The Los Angeles Times continued:

It may be not a little ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.

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.

And now Emily Oster has the gall to write a ho-hum style piece calling for “amnesty” with nary a worthy apology to be seen?

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Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see any common sense making its way through the cracks.

I support the apologies to the unvaccinated and the court rulings because I think they are just. I haven’t been gloating about them because I’m over the topic in general and because I’m simply ready to move on and not dwell on it.

But the same hubris and arrogance that caused all of this poor decision-making to begin with is still dripping off of The Atlantic’s latest “mea culpa”, which makes an attempt to rewrite history and trivializes the trauma many endured.

“Some of these choices turned out better than others,” the article casually writes at one point. At another point, like an alcoholic who can’t stop himself from taking another swig from the bottle, it begrudgingly has to make a perfunctory and obligatory reference to “misinformation”:

We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge.

Instead of an apology, we are left with this kumbaya moment:

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.

The Atlantic article can lead me to only one conclusion: many of the left simply don’t know how to apologize.

After all, it wasn’t enough to tell honest people that they were wrong during the course of the pandemic for decisions that turned out to be right, The Atlantic now wants to tell them they’re wrong again if they don’t forgive those who made their lives hell over the last two years.

A little tip for The Atlantic: next time, write a piece focused on apologizing instead of issuing orders about exactly how, when and why people should be forgiving you. In case you didn’t notice, it was trying to micromanage other peoples’ lives that got you in this mess in the first place.

Talk to us when you offer up accountability, not amnesty.