The Gentry Is Getting Nervous
A piece by Emily Oster from Monday in the Atlantic, home of David Brooks and Francis Fukuyama, Let's Declare A Pandemic Amnesty , has attracted a certain amount of comment. Ms Oster, an economics professor at Brown University, points this out in her piece to establish her credentialed membership in the elite, which is the platform from which she makes her proposal: In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward. We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. . . . Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic...