Here’s a letter to Newsweek:
Editor:
Thank you for publishing medical-student Kevin Bass’s admission that he and a sizeable portion of the scientific community were horribly mistaken about covid and covid policies (“It’s Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives,” January 30th). Mr. Bass commendably confesses to having recklessly supported measures that, we know now, did little to protect against covid but much to damage the livelihoods and health of millions of people. And – finally recognizing the wisdom of Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas, and the too-few others who early on warned of the madness of lockdowns – he further acknowledges that “[a]ll of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight.”
The optimist in me hopes that a medical scientist confessing, in a publication as prominent as Newsweek, to having heedlessly cheered on the commission of (literally) grave errors will help to ensure that the mass hysteria, censorship, and lethal ‘public-health’ authoritarianism of the past three years never happen again. But given how eagerly so very many people swallowed the lies, half-truths, and exaggerations of government officials such as Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Gavin Newsom – and how supinely people submitted to lockdowns – the realist in me remains fearful of the future.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
