Emily Oster Asks For Forgiveness, But Denies Needing To Be Forgiven
Pleas For Amnesty Require Truth, Not Falsehoods
There has been much hue and cry across social media since academic and “economist” Emily Oster issued her earnest appeal for amnesty and forgiveness regarding mistakes and errors of judgment made during the COVID-19 “pandemic.”
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. Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips. But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.
While as a general principle peace is always preferable to conflict, merely acknowledging that peace is preferable does not automatically mean we should always choose peace over conflict. Chocolate cake is preferable to broccoli, as a rule, yet it would be most injurious to personal health to always choose chocolate cake over broccoli.
Thus to consider whether choosing the peace offered by Emily Oster’s “pandemic amnesty” requires that we weigh the benefits of that amnesty against the benefits of seeking a measure of justice for the manifold wrongs done during the Pandemic Panic.
Straight away that analysis runs into a problem: Ms. Oster’s insistence that decisions were made during a period of great uncertainty when people simply did not know essential facts is fundamentally not true. Even more troubling, however, is the insistence of ignorance by someone who has published a “data driven” guidebook to parenting. The data regarding the realities of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic have long been available, and for someone who espouses the use of data in parenting to be completely ignorant of that data is simply too fantastical to be taken seriously.
I will stop short of calling Emily Oster a liar outright. I will stop just short of calling Emily Oster a liar outright.
Had Emily Oster been even slightly conversant with the data from the earliest days of the Pandemic Panic Narrative, she would have been aware of the corporate media’s appalling incompetence in failing to report even a little bit on the SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in China in late 2019, until well after alternative media had begun reporting the details.
If Emily Oster were as cognizant of data as her Atlantic bio proclaims, she would have been aware of the many ways the “experts” were demonstrably wrong about effective public health responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus as early as February of 2020.
If Emily Oster were cognizant of the data she would have better appreciated and even supported early proponents of the COVID-19 “bioweapon” hypothesis, which asserted a lab origin for the virus that has since become the most probable origin hypothesis for the virus, with the nuance of “bioweapon” reduced to parsing questions of intent vs ignorance, of stupidity vs malice by an ever expanding rogues gallery of researchers.
If Emily Oster had been following the data, she would have known by late February that the data being presented on the pandemic did not match the narrative.
If Emily Oster had been following the data, she would not have wasted her time in April of 2020 turning bandanas into face masks because she would have already known that multiple clinical studies conducted on multiple continents had already established that universal masking was ineffective at preventing the spread of infectious respiratory disease.
If Emily Oster had been following the data, she would have known before the lockdowns began here in the US that such strategies would fail, and she would have argued passionately against their use.
If Emily Oster had been following the data she would have had a more informed understanding of the panoply of health treatments for COVID-19, several of which, including hydroxychloroquine, had demonstrated levels of efficacy established by multiple peer reviewed studies.
If Emily Oster had been following the data, she would have realized by the fall of 2020 that the public health burden of COVID-19 was never what the media claimed it was, as COVID-19 patients were increasingly not ending up in hospital.
If Emily Oster had been following the data, she would have known long ago that the mRNA inoculations were an abject failure at stopping COVID-19.
She would have also known long ago that the mRNA inoculations were demonstrably harmful and toxic.
Yet despite having no excuse for her claimed ignorance, she now wants to use that ignorance, not just in her own defense, but as a blanket excuse for every malignant and malicious decision made during the Pandemic Panic.
In effect, while she is asking for forgiveness, she steadfastly denies having done anything requiring forgiveness—and thus she is rejecting forgiveness before anyone can even offer it to her. Rather, she seeks to avoid having to acknowledge the errors and the evils of the Pandemic Panic.
Amnesty and forgiveness cannot happen—and will not happen—until people stand up and admit their errors. Admission of sin is the essential prerequisite for receiving forgiveness. Seeking to dismiss and excuse sin is a perpetual bar to receiving forgiveness.
When the Faucists step forward and confess their evils, admit their lies, and acknowledge their conscious efforts to gaslight, mislead, misinform, and do outright harm to others, then, and only then, can thoughts turn to forgiveness.
Until the Faucists make these admissions, there can be no peace.
Until the Faucists are overthrown and made powerless, there will be only conflict.
Such is the world the willful ignorance pursued by Emily Oster has gifted us.
These people are asking for forgiveness way too late.
They knew.
Very well presented - although likely a bit overly triggering for some to actually land, but there will surely be others written using this as a stepping stone which may land with those better.
My only real difficulty is in this line: "When the Faucists step forward and confess their evils, admit their lies, and acknowledge their conscious efforts to gaslight, mislead, misinform, and do outright harm to others, then, and only then, can thoughts turn to forgiveness."
I suppose it turns on the definition of "Faucist" and cognitive dissonance and belief systems. I find it hard to believe that those at the level of Fauci and Daszak, especially given the redacted email trail that leads to a clear conclusion of complicity, weren't acting with full knowledge of what they were doing.
I wonder how many that we all would assume - and would hope - given their positions and authority - actually believe they were doing the right thing and just can't see it because their minds won't let them. They aren't or msg not be ignorant but they aren't fully willful either.
Or are people truly so evil?
Perhaps my blinders are on as well.