E&W Blog

Recently, The Atlantic published an article calling for a pandemic amnesty for “what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.” Yet amnesty won’t eliminate the learning loss suffered by students kept out of the classroom, nor will it help the workers fired from their jobs for refusing vaccination. Government officials do not need amnesty; they need accountability.

As an early and vocal advocate for science-based school reopening decisions, the author of this article has an important perspective. However, it must be pointed out that there is a major difference between personally forgiving those who have wronged us and giving bad public policy a pass. In this case, “forgiving” the politicians and local leaders who made poor decisions would be a dereliction of duty.   

To promote pandemic amnesty is a call for Americans to pardon leftist politicians and bureaucrats for kowtowing to the agendas of union bosses and special interests.

When teachers unions demanded schools remain closed, leftist politicians played their role as union lackeys and dutifully shuttered classrooms. This is not a matter of forgiveness, but of accountability. Politicians broke public trust—and that is no light thing.

The data and the science said schools were not major vectors of spread. Democrat leaders ignored this and pursued their flawed policies full steam ahead.

We cannot simply forget the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky met with and communicated with teachers unions on a near-constant basis to discuss school reopening guidelines, according to her internal calendars. On the same issue, she met with parents once.

Teachers unions had so much influence that the CDC even changed its guidelines on school reopening after American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten complained. Walensky even asked the AFT to provide language for school-reopening guidelines.

The results of the ensuing school closures have been catastrophic. New test scores revealed fourth-grade math scores dropped five points since 2019 and eighth-grade math scores fell 8 points. Further, many children suffered immense mental and emotional trauma during the pandemic because of school closures, leading to a 50 percent increase in suicide attempts by teen girls.   

How can the American people declare amnesty for past transgressions that still continue today? The Biden administration is still using the pandemic to enact far-reaching policies, like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s health care worker standard, to force medical staff to jump through unnecessary and cumbersome hoops just to do their jobs. It is also the excuse being used to justify the transfer of debt from those who took it on to hardworking taxpayers.
 
This is not a situation in which the American people can “forgive and forget.” To ensure that our country never repeats this kind of travesty, we must remember what our so-called leaders did to the American people during the pandemic.

Accountability, not amnesty, is the way to preserve what liberty and self-government we have left.