By Katie Pavlich |  Nov 04, 2022 – for Townhall.com

Greg Nash/Pool via AP

My cmnt: The very fact that the Libs are instigating this whole inappropriate “forgiveness” thing is indication that they KNOW they are inexcusably guilty. But this ploy at forgiveness is conflating forgiveness with justice. An individual can and must forgive, however the State is there to administer justice not mercy. Criminal malfeasance was going on and must be acknowledged and appropriately punished. Period.

After years of causing great and preventable harm, the so-called expert class, saturated with far too many higher education degrees, wants to call a truce over their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty,” Brown Professor Emily Oster writes in The Atlantic. “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”

Let’s start where I can agree. There’s some room for grace in the earliest months of the pandemic. In February 2020, the Chinese Communist Party, in partnership with the World Health Organization, lied about the seriousness and spread of the disease, which quickly led to the Wuhan coronavirus quickly becoming a global problem. We knew people in China were dying, and the Chinese government made the situation seem dire as it welded shut apartment buildings and disappeared doctors who eventually succumbed to the virus. 

But by May 2020, we were no longer “in the dark.” We had all the data and information needed to reopen the country and return to normal. 

First, we knew the virus was potentially fatal for the elderly and obese. Children were not at risk of death or even serious illness. 

“It’s so clear that the overwhelming weight of serious disease and mortality is on those who are elderly and those with a serious comorbidity: heart disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes, obesity, respiratory difficulties,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said on March 9, 2020. “There will be outliers, as we’ve seen with influenza, [a person] who is young and healthy who winds up getting COVID-19, seriously ill and dies. But if you look at the weight of the data the risk group is very, very clear.”

We also knew at the time that lockdowns weren’t working. New York City, ground zero, showed us this. 

“Most new Covid-19 hospitalizations in New York state are from people who were staying home and not venturing much outside, a ‘shocking’ finding, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday. The preliminary data was from 100 New York hospitals involving about 1,000 patients, Cuomo said at his daily briefing,” CNBC reported on May 6, 2020. “It shows that 66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home.”

And yet, the draconian lockdowns, denial of other medical care, and the shuttering of schools continued. Businesses were told they could not reopen and workers were prevented from earning a living. Employers who dared to reopen were fined thousands of dollars per day and threatened with arrest. 

The more data we had that contradicted the “experts” and bureaucrats in charge of the response, the harsher they became. 

People were forced to die alone in hospitals due to COVID policies. Pregnant women were forced to give birth without their husbands and separated from their newborn babies if one of them simply tested positive for the virus. Schools were closed for years, putting America’s students a generation behind. Other medical emergencies were ignored and addiction treatment was halted. Surfers and parents were arrested for going outside. High school and college graduations were canceled. Funerals were held on Zoom, if at all. The prime years of life for young adults were wiped away, leading to an exponential increase in suicide, depression, and death from alcohol abuse. Americans were told to cancel family gatherings, throwing away precious time as if there would be more. For many, there wasn’t. 

When the experimental vaccine became available, things worsened with anti-American social credit scores, vilification based on false fear, mandates, and some doctors claiming “the unvaccinated” should be kept as prisoners. 

“We need to start looking at the choice to remain unvaccinated the same as we look at driving while intoxicated. You have the option to not get vaccinated if you want, but then you can’t go out in public,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen said in September 2021. “The vaccinated should not have to pay the price for the so-called choices of the unvaccinated anymore.” 

At this point, we knew the vaccinated were infecting the unvaccinated, but Big Tech was censoring that fact. 

The tyrants also threatened a vaccine passport requirement for train and plane travel, preventing Americans from seeing their loved ones or exercising their rights to move about freely. 

Firefighters, police officers, nurses, doctors, and other frontline workers in places like New York City were fired from their jobs and banned from restaurants and office buildings. “Papers, please.” This, despite putting their lives on the line in the earliest days of the pandemic and obtaining natural immunity through infection. Hell, President Joe Biden attempted to use OSHA to force nearly every worker in the country to get jabbed. 

All of this was happening despite the vaccine obviously being flawed and failing to stop transmission, as fully vaccinated individuals were still contracting the disease. And yet, it took a year for the CDC to admit vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals should be treated the same, long after “the unvaccinated” were vilified and run out of society. Natural immunity was never studied by the agency. Instead, it continued to push Pfizer’s fraudulent product with a big dose of fearmongering. 

“For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm,” Biden claimed in December 2021. “But there’s good news: If you’re vaccinated and you had your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death — period.”

This, of course, was a total lie. 

Bureaucrats had the data early, yet they moved forward with tyrannical, cruel, and inhumane policies for years. Pandemic amnesty? It takes nerve to even suggest the idea. Americans deserve accountability, not amnesty. They are owed damages and assurances their lives will never be taken over by the government in the same fashion ever again. In the aftermath of the abuses, limited government politicians, bolstered by the U.S. Constitution, must use government to pass laws that protect the citizenry from the government. 

“We need to forgive one another for what we did and said.”

Many of us never engaged in this type of despicable behavior. It’s a damn shame so many people did. 

Readers’ comments:

Great article. One thing more is the political attack on therapeutics. I remember the press conferences by President Trump. He would report the best current research that came to his attention in order to give Americans hope. Once he reported that researchers were looking at cleaners to kill the virus in people’s lungs. The democrat haters immediately attacked him for suggesting that people sniff Clorox. That was a lie. Also President Trump mentioned Hydroxychloroquine. This was the end of using this for Covid. Shame on the democrat haters.

So many did not have to die. Several doctors were sounding the alarm bells and offering therapeutics. They were shut down by medical groups who had a gun to the doctor’s heads threatening to remove their credentials. Still do. All so drug companies can make billions. The media also played a big part in the needless loss of life. No forgiveness or forgetting.

Cui bono, LarryBo. You can’t use Emergency Use Authorization if there is any existing treatment available. Hydroxychloraquine and Ivermectin, if not demonized, would have screwed up the gravy train for the so-called Vaccines that turned out not to be vaccines after all. Always, follow the money to figure out what’s really going on.

And people died because of this. I have no forgiveness!

Please forgive. It will only hurt you to carry that burden, which isn’t yours to carry. Let them carry their guilt.

That’s absurd. It won’t hurt adults at all. What will hurt is not detecting this from happening again. These people knew the facts even before we did. They need to be hanged. Or we are saying all those who died from their decisions are and were of no importance to our society.

My friend’s 85 year old mother has lupus and takes hydroxychloroquine. She contracted covid in 2020 in her senior living community and had no symptoms. Yet Fauci was adamant that any evidence about hydroxychloroquine curing people who were on the verge of death was just “anecdotal”. Hmm, could it be he didn’t want people being cured by a cheap, plentiful drug because he stood to make millions on a vaccine? It’s absolutely criminal what happened during the pandemic from people dying to so many businesses being lost forever, but we should just let bygones be?

Forgiveness?? I’m disabled & live in a nursing home here in PA. This facility was locked down for over a year. Our excellent staff did their best to be supportive but I still ate my holiday meals alone in my room. The scum who caused this know who you are. You could see your families but I couldn’t. I don’t want to hear a word about any more lockdowns. They didn’t work before & they won’t work ever again. Gov. Wolf, Dr. Levine, Dr. Fauci: go pound sand. I wish you had suffered as much as we did being imprisoned in our facility. You’re all disgusting. That also means you people at the PA Health Dept. as well.🤬 we’re doing much better now but the past memories still hurt.

My dad spent is 85 birthday alone in the hospital due to a wound that wasn’t healing. Fortunately he’s fine now and 87. The nurses loved him because he never complains and is always joking. They brought him homemade treats! Sang him happy birthday and the cafeteria sent up half of a cake. I’m just so glad he didn’t pass alone. And by the time my mom passed this summer everything here had been back to normal for nearly 2 years.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: if these Covid tyrants go on national television, apologize for their crimes against humanity, and then blow their own brains out on national television – I MIGHT consider forgiveness then.

I know, forgiveness is the Christian thing to do, but even in Christianity…before forgiveness must come justice.

Excellent article, now is the time for all Americans to go out and vote. Our Constitutional Republic must stand, be honored and people be held accountable for what has been done. We must focus on our children and demand that education tax dollars follows the student wherever the parents choose to educate them. Teachers Unions must be investigated by the US Senate as to their involvement in this whole ordeal.

June of 2020 my parents fell on different floors of their house and it was 5 days before the mailman initiated a “welfare check”. A short zoom from the hospital (my wife had to leave during it as my Dad looked a lot like me and she couldn’t take it) and after 6 days he went to hospice and Mom went to rehab; night and day difference between the two facilities.

Hospice I’d drive 2.5 Hours, have a temperature check and then I could stay all day and drive home afterwards. Rehab… no visiting at all! When she took a turn for the worse (due to their incompetence IMO) and it became hospice care I could drive up there, gloves, mask, gown and I could stay a whopping 30 minutes. 5 Hour round trip for 30 minutes, but <shrug>. Then she got a bit better so back to no visiting and in December she got covid.

Dad’s death certificate correctly identifies the main and contributing causes, but Mom’s just says covid 19 and doesn’t mention any of her other maladies. Finally had a proper funeral at their church in mid 2021.

Forgive and forget? F! right off with that

I’m so sorry for the loss of your parents. It’s simply nonsensical the way you (and they) were treated!

My grandmother lived at in a retirement community (one of those with individual houses, but also had nursing facilities), and they shut it down to visitors. Further, residents were told they had to stay in their rooms (of course, the staff were still going from room to room, so…).

My grandma was in an apartment at this point, so she had a housekeeper and a nurse that made sure she was taking her meds, but otherwise lived pretty independently. She had all these hobby clubs in the community, a man she was ‘talking to’, and took classes (especially painting). Suddenly going from regular visits with family and all these other social activities to zero visitors and you can’t leave your apartment was horrible for her mental health. She contracted a respiratory infection – tested negative for COVID several times. We weren’t allowed to visit, even after she was hospitalized. It wasn’t until she was put in hospice that her kids were allowed one, single visit (thank God for my tech savvy Mom, we were at least able to say goodbye over a video call). They were told that they wouldn’t get another visit until she was in a coma/not responsive. 😠 WTAF. By the way, they put CV19 on her death certificate.

These people are criminals. I will not forgive and pretend we were all doing the best we could. I’m willing to forgive the rank and file for masking up and avoiding people early in 2020. But the evil that ran rampant through our society must be confronted, lest it happen again.

Yet today I saw an entire family all masked up as they were coming out of the grocery store…

Imagine having convinced your own kids that they’re a danger to everyone around them. But there they were…

How about we have a go at retribution against them for all the psychological and emotional damage they’ve done, before we even think about forgiveness?