A 'Pandemic Amnesty'? How People See Forgiveness for COVID-19 Missteps
Summary from the AllSides News Team
With new data about how math and reading scores dropped nationwide in the past year, many continue to reflect on decisions around COVID-19 restrictions and whether some did more harm than good. How do we rectify those mistakes as a society?
What the Writers Said: It's time to "declare a pandemic amnesty," said economist Emily Oster in The Atlantic (Left bias). Oster acknowledged overbearing COVID-19 restrictions, such as keeping schools closed for too long, implementing restrictions on outdoor activities, and other "important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty," and encouraged forgiveness. "No, thank you," responded writer Michael Brendan Dougherty for National Review (Right bias), who instead called for "more forensic accountability for our institutions" and "much better reflection from journalists, experts, and the public."
Anthony LaMesa, who writes frequently about pandemic-related school closures, said in response to Oster's piece that "If your aunt refused to invite you to Thanksgiving, because you couldn’t quarantine for a week before dinner, consider forgiveness. If your children missed nearly 1.5 years of formal schooling, because of decisions made by powerful politicians and institutions, consider demanding accountability." Overall, the center and right paid more attention to Oster's article than the left did.
For Context: U.S. schools recorded significant nationwide drops in reading and math scores in the past year, and sources across the spectrum blamed COVID-19 school closures.
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Center
Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty
In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks. Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”
These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing...
From the Right
A ‘Pandemic Amnesty’? Hell, No
Emily Oster, writing at the Atlantic, asks whether we can all just forgive and forget about what we said and did to one another during the Covid-19 pandemic. On the question of masks, school closings, and the efficacy of this or that vaccine, some people got it right, and some got it wrong. But litigating this forever is a waste of time, she argues. The headline is “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty.”
No, thank you. I don’t want this. And I don’t even think Emily Oster should want this. Frankly, Oster...
From the Center
We can forgive each other, but the powerful should be held accountable Forgiving a friend is different than forgiving Gavin Newsom.
Brown University Economist Emily Oster — who I deeply respect — has a piece out this morning encouraging forgiveness for actions and words over the past few years: “a pandemic amnesty.” And I do think Oster is right that, between friends and loved ones, we should strongly consider forgiving pandemic mistakes. At the same time, we absolutely need institutional and political accountability for our pandemic response.
Let’s use the Iraq War as an example. I suspect most Americans forgave friends and family members...
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