Try Saying Sorry First

So there’s this Atlantic article getting a lot of comment, mostly negative as far as I can tell, for suggesting we need an amnesty of Wuflu actions.

Now to a degree I get where the writer is coming from. And she certainly has had opprobrium from just about everyone for some of the things she advocated (she wanted schools open earlier and everyone vaccinated for example), but I read the article and I saw one glaring lack:

An apology for getting things wrong

She’s not alone, mind you. I don’t know I’ve seen anyone apologise, certainly no one in a position of authority. That’s a problem.

I’m willing to forgive people but has to be a quid pro quo that is an acknowledgement that there is something to forgive. If you can’t admit you made mistakes and that those mistakes killed people, bankrupted businesses and so on then you don’t get my forgiveness. And as I tweeted people who got things wrong up to about June 2020 get a pass because there was a ton of confusion and (especially from the PRC) misleading information so figuring stuff out was hard. But anyone who continued to advocate school closures, isolation of the elderly, mask safety theater and so on after that date needs to apologise.

Anyone who insisted on vaccination of everyone, including the young, and wanted passports, mandates or other coercive measures needs to apologise.

Anyone who mindlessly mocked recommendations for HCQ, Zinc, Vitamin D, Ivermectin and so on needs to apologise [Note that I’m unconvinced that HCQ or Ivermectin actually helped but they were almost certainly a) harmless and b) cheap so taking them was no big deal, and I could be wrong about their effectiveness]. So does anyone who deliberately misinterpreted President Trump’s remarks about disinfectant to imply that he said people should inject bleach. In fact the mainstream media needs to do a general apology for their un-questioning slavish devotion to “the science” even when said “science” changed its mind and their related trashing of anyone who didn’t follow “the science” as it was declared to be at the time. Come to think of it the people stating “the science” i.e. Fauci, Ferguson and co, would do the world a huge favor by admitting that they made mistakes and apologising for them. One big reason why there’s a general distrust of public health authorities now is this inability to admit that they ever made a mistake. Even when they contradict their statements from months earlier. You want people to trust you? Admit you aren’t perfect instead of lying about what you recommended two months earlier/

And all the fucking little gauleiters, capos and snitches as well as their enablers in government and the police force need to get on their knees and beg for forgiveness really hard because their actions significantly contributed to the reduction in trust in society in general.

The worst part of the Atlantic article is the way in encourages no one to take responsibility.Effectively the whole article is “Mistakes were made but we need to move on.”

Fine but the mistakes didn’t make themselves. The passive voice is what blameshifters use. A person who deserves respect would say “I made a mistake in doing/saying X” and Emily Oster could have done a lot better if she’d apoligised herself for some of the things she advocated that were wrong.

The article has been roundly criticised for many reasons but I think at base the reason is the way it excuses people and lets them off the hook.

The world economy has been screwed up, millions of people have died and millions more have myocarditis or irregular periods or other vaccine side-effects and not a single person responsible has been big enough to say sorry.