No ‘Pandemic Amnesty,’ We Want Accountability
An essay by Emily Oster, Ph.D., published this week in The Atlantic suggesting “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID” is fanning the flames of fury among those whose lives were destroyed by ad hominem attacks, de-platforming, delicensure, demonetization, demonization and debilitating vaccine injuries.
By Madhava Setty, M.D.
*“Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” an essay in this week’s “Ideas” section of The Atlantic, included this subhead: “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”
The author of the article, Emily Oster, Ph.D., who teaches economics at Brown University, reflects on the kinds of mistakes “we” made while “we” were in the dark about COVID-19, such as the use of cloth masks outdoors to prevent spread and useless school closures.
She also contends that we now know, in retrospect, some of the vaccines available in this country were better than others.
Oster offers proof the Pfizer and Moderna formulations are superior to Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) by citing a study published in February in Nature. However, the study did not compare the mRNA vaccines to the J&J formulation, and it didn’t compare any clinical outcomes in those who received the experimental products as she implies.
Why then did Oster quote the study as evidence of the superiority of mRNA vaccines? Was it because of the paper’s title, “mRNA vaccine-induced antibodies more effective than natural immunity in neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 and its high-affinity variants”?
Did she just type “mRNA vaccines are better” into her browser and choose something “sciency” from the search results?*
Me thinks that Oster is really going to regret writing this Atlantic article.