Covid forgiveness? Not until the guilty acknowledge they were wrong, apologize, and promise not to do it again. By Douglas Wilson.

Now that the facts are coming out, many of those who were hard in favor of all the draconian COVID measures are now acknowledging the obvious.

• There was a great deal of over-reaction.
• More is required in establishing sound health policy than adrenaline and panic.

Why can we not just be grateful for that acknowledgement and move on?

Hang on a moment:

But those who now want to “let the healing begin” are leaving one important fact out of their recital of all these events. And it is a crucial fact, one that colors absolutely everything else. When the scare first hit (the scare, not the virus), it is true enough to say that nobody knew about the efficacy of masks, or of lock downs, or of the vaccines, or of Ivermectin, or of Hydroxychloroquine. Nobody knew if it was caused by a wet market bat, medium rare, or by a lab leak. The whole thing hit us from behind, and none of us knew anything. Fair enough.

But we knew then, and we know now, with absolute clarity we know, which side wouldn’t let the other side talk. We know who was censoring, and we know who was censored.

And we also know who has not yet sought forgiveness for shutting down all discussion, all debate, and all impartial scientific investigation. …

Those who want an amnesty now are pleading with us, saying, “It was uncharted territory. We just didn’t know.” But this cannot be reconciled with the hard orthodoxy on all these related issues that formed within weeks of the outbreak. The people who are claiming that they did not know at that time are the same people who claimed at that time that they did in fact know.

• So if you thought it was a lab leak from Wuhan, you were a racist.
• If you wanted scientific trials for Ivermectin, you were an idiot, and moreover, you were an idiot who found himself kicked off various online platforms.
• If you were a world-class epidemiologist who had doubts about the official narrative, you were summarily banned, regardless of your credentials.

[But] if you were a shill for the CDC, however mendacious and ill-informed, you were allowed to go on at length. Air time was yours for the asking.

There were the enforcers of the official orthodoxy then, and there are the professions of ignorance now. Which is it? It cannot be both. …

Separating the sheep from the goats:

The people who were silenced on lock downs were the people who were correct about the lock downs. The people who were censored over masks were the people who were correct about the efficacy of masks. The people who challenged the vaccine mandates were right about the hazards of those untested vaccines, and they were the people who were not allowed to talk. Many of them had their careers and lives ruined because they tried to talk.

Refusal to deal with the actual issues is why this central issue remains. The central issue is the threat of “government by emergency.” Confronted with any crisis, we should want to find out what the truth is. …

So when you say now that you “did not know,” you need to remember that a bunch of us heard you claiming that you did know. You said that you were following the science when you were only following the television. You legislated as though you knew. You arrested as though you knew. You fined as though you knew. You censored as though you knew.

And until that glaring fact is acknowledged, and rejected with repentance, any kind of patched-up amnesty would be simply criminal. So no.

The stain remains. We are waiting, though frankly, not expecting much.

hat-tip Stephen Neil