The pandemic postmortems are wrong

Created
Wed, 03/05/2023 - 07:30
Updated
Wed, 03/05/2023 - 07:30
I don’t know how many of you remember the resignation of NY Times reporter Donald MacNeil during the height of the COVID pandemic and if you don’t, the details are all right here. Without taking a position on the merits of the pressure he was under, I do think it was unfortunate that he had to leave at the time he did because he was a great science reporter in the middle of a once in a century pandemic. We lost something valuable. His newsletter today shows just what we lost. He takes on the NY Times’ truly shitty treatment of Dr. Anthony Fauci at the hands of Benjamim Wallace-Wells the other day. This is just the opening. I urge you to read the whole thing: I love science-fiction series like “The Man in the High Castle” because they force us to question our ingrained assumption that history was always ordained to turn out as it did. It was set in 1950’s America after the Allies lost World War II. Germany had beaten us to The Bomb, vaporized Washington and stormed ashore at Virginia Beach. Berlin and Tokyo had divided the U.S. between them. Most Americans were cowed but prospering under the new regime. The few resisters were holed up in the Rockies fighting a losing guerilla war. I kept thinking of that series as I read David Wallace-Wells’ interview with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, which is destined for this Sunday’s New York Times magazine. It is amazing how the certainty with…