On COVID-19 And Public Trust
Our leaders got plenty of things wrong about COVID-19, but their unwillingness to acknowledge that is why more people won't believe what leaders have to say.
Back in June of 2021, Jon Stewart appeared on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" and made a remark that was considered to be blasphemous among the elite -- that COVID-19 came from a lab.
Stewart isn't without his faults and sometimes can fall for elitist thinking. However, when Stewart dared to go against the grain and say that the virus in question originated from a lab, some accused him of siding with the enemy.
“My bigger problem with that was, I thought it was a pretty good bit that expressed kind of how I felt, and the two things that came out of it were, I’m racist against Asian people, and how dare I align myself with the alt-right.”
Again, Stewart may have gotten things wrong about other issues but, as time has passed, there are more reports that COVID-19 may have come from a lab -- the most recent from the FBI.
I admit I've gotten things wrong about COVID-19. I thought the "two weeks to slow the spread" approach would help, but there's no evidence lockdowns slowed the spread. Furthermore, I thought that two weeks would give leaders time to prepare a strategy to mitigate COVID-19, but few, if any, came up with such strategies.
I also made a tweet about the decision to pause the usage of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. I believed that pausing its use would undermine trust in vaccines. I don't have the tweet in front of me, but it's out there somewhere and it was foolish of me to say that. In fact, pausing the vaccine’s usage was the correct step to take.
What has actually undermined trust in vaccines was our government leaders pushing them as the only way to stop COVID-19. But there is evidence that natural immunity provides as much protection as a vaccine, that Vitamin D may provide a benefit against COVID-19 and that the vaccine itself, while beneficial to the elderly, had little benefit for younger people, particularly given the potential risk of myocarditis for younger people who got the vaccine.
Like everyone else, I was making the best possible guesses when it came to COVID-19, though sometimes I didn’t look closer at evidence. There were things I got wrong from the start (lockdowns), there were things I thought might help but didn’t have enough evidence to be sure (masks) and things I got right, particularly after looking at more evidence (schools should be re-opened).
The problem comes with our leaders and the media outlets who back them declaring that some things are not up for discussion. Wearing a mask, getting the vaccine and keeping schools closed did not become about mitigating the spread of COVID-19 but about virtue signaling. The people who embrace these things are The Good People, while the people who question these things are The Enemy.
As for the origins of COVID-19, it's worth noting that the revelation of the FBI's belief comes out at a time in which China’s trading with Russia has hit a record high. And that comes at a time in which many American leaders have insisted we must stand against Russia in its war with Ukraine.
This does not mean that, therefore, the lab leak theory is false. Rather, it means that the narrative pushed forward had less to do with what evidence shows and more to do with whatever policy goal American leaders want to push, all while the media encourages everyone to join a tribe.
But when everything becomes about pushing whatever policy goal is desired at a given moment, only to turn around and push something different without a good explanation, that's when trust is lost. Failure to admit that either you got something wrong, or that you truly didn't know the answer at the time, is another way in which people stop trusting you.
The problem with tribalism is that it teaches you to never admit you were wrong about something, lest you look weak in the face of The Enemy. But, in reality, saying things like "I might be wrong" or "I don't have the evidence to say for certain either way" is a sign of strength. It's a willingness to admit that you don't always have the correct answer to something.
It's particularly a strength in our current times, in which more people desire likes and shares on social media and say things to get more of them, even if there's no evidence to support the things they say.
And if our leaders had simply said “we don’t have clear evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab, but we can’t rule it out just yet,” they may have done more to ensure the public trusted them.
When it comes to COVID-19, there may be a few things that our leaders got right about it, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't hold themselves accountable when it comes to the things they got wrong. Because when they don't, the public is less willing to listen to what they have to say -- and are thus unwilling to listen to the leaders when the leaders are right.
It's up to our leaders to rebuild trust. That will only come if our leaders show strength, by admitting where they got something wrong.