Episode 289: Not Casting Blame / Grieving Our Losses

I would not want to be any sort of political leader at this time. The potentially life-or-death decisions they have to make, with imperfect models and a virus we knew nothing about, have to be incredibly stress-inducing. I can’t blame them for incorrect decisions in those circumstances.

It’s healthy to grieve for what we’ve lost during the pandemic. And it’s wrong to disparage someone who does that.

Mentioned links:

Nolte: The Coronavirus Made Brian Stelter Cry

If You Want A Lesson In Bravery, Don’t Look To Brian Stelter

Brian Stelter Has a Meltdown Over Our ‘Pre-Pandemic Lives’

Show transcript

They say that hindsight is 20/20, and that’s especially true in the year 2020. The response to the pandemic here in the States has come under scrutiny and criticism. Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked in one of the press conferences whether fewer people would have been sick or died if we’d reacted sooner. It was a silly question to ask; of course things would have been better. But when Trump, on January 30th, restricted incoming travel from foreign nationals who’d been to China, he was called racist and xenophobic, which, as I’ve noted, is the Left’s go-to response when they’ve got nothing else. What they want you to forget is that at that same time Nancy Pelosi was telling people (in a now-deleted tweet) to not be afraid and celebrate the Chinese New Year in Chinatown, and that California governor Gavin Newsome let the LA Marathon go on during the first week in March. Imagine if Trump had ordered a nationwide lockdown along with that travel ban over a month before the marathon. If one of those acts was allegedly racist, imagine the pushback he’d have gotten for the other. So sure, we could have done better with the response, but would America have been OK with that, especially Democrats who reflexively assume the worst? It’s unmitigated hypocrisy.

But here’s the thing; I don’t fault any politician – federal or state, Democrat or Republican – for their reaction one way or the other during a pandemic featuring a virus we had never seen before. Their criticisms of others might be hypocritical, but their reactions to the impending crisis are not something I would fault them for. I would not want to be any sort of political leader at this point in time. I just would not want to be, for example, the governor of a state, looking at some of the models (which had dire predictions of sickness and death for a virus which, again, we really knew nothing about) and trying to decide to lockdown or not to lockdown. That is a question I would not want to have the responsibility to answer.

Remember, the World Health Organization was, at the time, parroting the lies coming out of the Communist Chinese government that there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission. The CDC was saying masks wouldn’t really help. So much misinformation was out there, and our representatives were supposed to make (what could be) life or death decisions based on it. So count me out of both running for political office, as well as casting blame.

During times like these, there is something we can do to help with our mental health; grieve. Even if COVID-19 hasn’t affected your friends or family, we’ve experienced a loss of one kind or another. For some, it’s a loved one who has died. For some it is the loss of a job, or it’s a small business that you built that has gone under, or is hobbled to say the least. For some, it may be missing friends, family, or co-workers because we’re sheltering in place and...