Jack Elbaum
Last week, The Atlantic published an article by Dr. Emily Oster, an economics professor at Brown University, titled “Let’s Declare A Pandemic Amnesty.”
In the piece, Oster argues that, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we were plagued by a lack of true knowledge about the best way to react to the virus. Consequently, “almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong.”
Because of this, Oster argues we should forgive those who were wrong and move on; after all, how could they be blamed for their position when all the information was not available? By doing this, she concludes, we can avoid “a repetitive doom loop” of negativity and address the issues—ranging from …