It was never going to go on in perpetuity. But how do you retreat from “punish the unvaccinated” and “your mask protects me” and “antiscience right-wingers are trying to kill grandma” without conceding that the people you have been demonizing for almost two years were right the whole time? Easy.
You weren’t wrong; the science changed.
Many people were thrilled to hear Bari Weiss decide that she was done with the pandemic. Finally, even some of the most hardcore lockdowners had come around. But have they?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to hear that people are done and that we might actually be recovering some since of normalcy. But note some key phrases:
“they are scared to be called anti-vax…”
“…look at the data that we did not have two years ago.”
“it’s not real ANYMORE”
These all reveal the same belief. “What we did before wasn’t wrong, but it is now.”
“We couldn’t have known better.” “I was following the science last year, but we know better now.” “I’m not like one of those bad people who deny science or support Trump.” “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Tragically, just coming to the right conclusions a year or two too late isn’t going to cut it. As has been pointed out repeatedly, all the things it is okay to admit now were known and knowable from the beginning. People in the know have been screaming them as loudly as they could, and they were met with derision and censorship.
People can be forgiven for not listening to them. They can be forgiven for believing government institutions before podcasters. They can be forgiven for thinking they could comply their way to freedom. But forgiveness requires contrition. And you can’t be contrite if you don’t think you did anything wrong. And it is critically important that we admit who was right and who was wrong, or else we doom ourselves to this same disaster in perpetuity. If the science can change and no one knew better, why not believe the CDC next time? If the science can change, why not silence anyone who disagrees with the consensus? If the science can change, you can be right, completely change your position, and still be right.
I’ll admit I was wrong early on during the lock-downs. But I have the intellectual humility to admit it and to admit I should have known better. And that humility is desperately needed right now. Getting it right now is not enough. The people who were right all along need to be lauded, and the people who were wrong exposed.
Sadly, it’s not that easy.
A large number of people did and thought horrible things in the name of trusting the science in the last two years. They forced masks and useless injections on their children and kept them out of school and away from society. They quarantined from friends and family. They missed weddings and births and funerals and holidays. And they HATED anyone who dared suggest that this wasn’t entirely correct and necessary. They wished death upon them and wanted them removed from society.
And then it turns out they were right and you were wrong? How do you deal with that psychologically? How do you face the person you were and the manifestly evil things you did when you should have known better? How do you admit that the people you mocked were right and you were wrong? That takes incredible courage. It’s much easier to excuse your behavior. You didn’t know any better and you shouldn’t have known any better. It’s okay to change your mind now, but it wasn’t earlier.
That’s a much more attractive alternative long as you don’t care about intellectual honesty or consistency. Sadly, that describes many in our society, and so it is the path many will go down. Mentally and emotionally, it has all the upside with none of the down. You get your life back. You don’t need to feel guilty about anything you’ve done; it wasn’t your fault after all. You don’t have to apologize to the people you insulted. Hell, you can continue to mock them as anti-science because they didn’t know any better than you did. It didn’t make sense to change your mind until you did so, so they are still anti-science. You can even lie to yourself and believe the situation changed because you did all the right things. You were actually doing the right thing, not the wrong thing. And because you obeyed so well, everything is better.
Again, as long as you don’t care about the truth, this is infinitely more palatable. And the people who WERE right all along will just be happy to get back to normal. The real conflict will come with those who got used to living in their prison and aren’t ready to go back. Like a fashion victim who is a season behind the latest styles, they’ll be seen as a little tardy, but ultimately harmless. They just don’t know any better. The science changed and they just aren’t quite up to speed. It was a rough time for everyone, cut them some slack.
So celebrate everyone who decides they are through with the insanity. Welcome them. Be kind to them, but gently encourage them to admit that they were wrong, that they should have known better, and that they need to know better in the future. They need to reevaluate who they can, and more importantly, who they cannot trust. Go through this process with yourself. What did you get wrong? Why did you get it wrong? What can you learn for the next time? (There will be a next time) Realize how emotionally painful this will be. Have sympathy for the psychic anguish this can cause. But realize that if we do no learn this painful lesson, we will never really get back to normal.