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Osterism
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Osterism

When you want to move on from the damage you helped cause but haven't told the truth about it

Jessica Hockett
Oct 31, 2022
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Osterism
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aerial view photography of road between green grass

Dr. Emily Oster, the Brown University economist who spent a good part of the pandemic response denying that her own data indicted the uselessness of masking kids in schools, published an article in The Atlantic today, calling for “a pandemic amnesty.” Short version: Let’s chalk up the devastation caused by fear-driven policies to benign ignorance and good intentions.

Eugyppius captured my sentiments with rhetorical brilliance, when he characterized Oster as a “comfortable and clueless Ivy League mommyconomist who is ready to mouth support for basically any pandemic policy that doesn’t directly affect her or her family and then plead that the horrible behaviour and policies supported by her entire social milieu are just down to ignorance about the virus.”

eugyppius: a plague chronicle
Emily Oster proposes “a pandemic amnesty,” suggests that “we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID”
I don’t know much about the American pandemic pundits, but I gather that Brown University economist and “parenting guru” Emily Oster is far from the worst of them. Her Twitter timeline suggests she spent the early months of the pandemic terrified about the virus until school closures took their toll on her kids, at which point she repositioned herself a…
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3 months ago · 205 likes · 127 comments · eugyppius

Oster’s implicit claim that next-to-nothing was known about SARS-CoV-2 - and therefore all the pointless, unethical, & illegal things people were forced to do are understandable - isn’t the pathway to healing, because it’s dishonest. Inexplicably, she denies that, from the get-go, we knew (for example)

  • covid’s risks were highly skewed toward sick elderly people,

  • plexiglass & masks don’t stop viruses,

  • school closures are harmful, and

  • exposure quarantines & contact tracing are useless.

She also defends things like closing beaches as “hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge.” This twisted thinking - this Osterism, I’ll call it - both a) denies the truth about what was known, and b) excuses doing the worst, most non-sensical and predictably harmful things in the name of not knowing.

If an out-of-touch professor were the only person pushing such ideas, we could ignore it. Unfortunately, other vocal credentialed experts - not to mention public officials, school & church leaders, and friends/family members who embraced all manner of superstitious and harmful mitigations - have a similar mindset.

Osterism in any form will never, ever lead to healing, nor will it prevent this nightmare from happening again.

By contrast, those who promulgated the mass delusion need to follow a process along these lines:

  1. Admit the wrong you did — accurately, specifically, & without excuse-making.

  2. Explicitly acknowledge that what you did was wrong, in effect if not intent, and damaging.

  3. Apologize.

  4. Humbly ask for forgiveness.

  5. Receive forgiveness from those willing to extend it.

  6. Accept consequences.

  7. Make restitution (if possible).

  8. Put guardrails in place that prevent yourself (& others) from doing it again.

Osterists would prefer to bypass these steps and re-brand under Preventing the Next Pandemic, taking no real ownership. In their world, the only Purveyors of Disinformation were those who promoted injections — bleach injections, that is. 🙄

Do I want us all to “move on,” like Emily does? Absolutely.

But the road to relief begins at the intersection of confession & truth, not avoidance & prevarication.

Brownstone Institute has republished this post.


Other Substack articles on Emily Oster’s faux-pology:

The New Normal
“Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty”—Not
I’ll admit, I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw Brown Professor Emily Oster’s new headline in The Atlantic this morning. It’s the headline we’ve been waiting to see—and, in the revisionist, gaslighting style that’s become the journalistic norm on the response to Covid—it’s about the closest thing to an outright admission of guilt that we’ve seen sinc…
Read more
3 months ago · 171 likes · 87 comments · Michael P Senger
Relamination
With whom does Emily Oster want an amnesty? Moms, so they will return to the democratic fold
We are still a long ways from a place where a COVID amnesty can be granted. The political establishment—left and right—want desperately to move on, to pretend the last 30 months didn’t happen. With very few exceptions (Ron DeSantis, Kirsti Noem, Rand Paul, Kevin Massie, Ron Johnson, and a few others, later), they betrayed their core values. Many Republi…
Read more
3 months ago · 17 likes · 3 comments · Emily Burns
AJ Kay
"Amnesty" is not the Solution to Disastrous Policy Decisions
“I’m so sorry you got hurt. How could I have known it would hurt you when I hit you with that bat?” “I appreciate your apology, but it will be hard to stay friends knowing you’re capable of something like that.” “Like what? I didn’t know the bat would hurt you. How could I have known…
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3 months ago · 62 likes · 25 comments · AJ Kay
Vinay Prasad's Observations and Thoughts
Pandemic accountability
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many bad policies being implemented. We need accountability so that we never institute these policies again. Let me enumerate some structural solutions The person who heads the National Institutes of Health funding (or any of the Institutes) should not be setting federal policy. Either decide who gets funded, or set pol…
Read more
3 months ago · 448 likes · Vinay Prasad
Rational Ground by Justin Hart
Accountability Not Amnesty
The failures and harms from our pandemic public policies are legion! Fauci-endorsed lockdowns were ineffective (and damaging!)[1]; risks from COVID-19 are not uniform for the entire population but directly aligned to your age[2]; the mortality impact on children is almost immeasurable but we burdened them with mandates and school closures…
Read more
3 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Justin Hart
Unmasked
No, You Can't Have Pandemic 'Amnesty'
On October 31st, The Atlantic published an article by Professor Emily Oster that has generated an immense amount of outrage and discussion. The subheading summarizes the purpose of the piece, which is to “forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID…
Read more
3 months ago · 77 likes · 35 comments · Ian Miller
Everything And Nothing All At Once
The Pandemic Pariah
Can we all just take a moment and understand that @ProfEmilyOster will now be remembered for this 👇 instead of her early efforts to #OpenSchools…
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3 months ago · 2 likes · Erich Hartmann
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Matt P
Oct 31, 2022Liked by Jessica Hockett

Amazing to think that she thinks it's ok that experts were ignorant and clueless. If my financial guy panics and tries random stuff (eg selling) everytime the market goes down, he needs to be fired and is not an expert, he is a hack.

And in the case of our officials they purposely misled and censored so there needs to be punishment.

Then we can move on 👍

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JudyC
Nov 1, 2022·edited Nov 1, 2022Liked by Jessica Hockett

The information was always out there. I’m not a nurse, or doctor, or any kind of medical person, yet I was able to see the truth about what was going on very quickly. I was able to protect myself, my family, and my immediate circle of friends by listening the many doctors who urged caution and then provided actual scientific studies. Doctors like Malone, McCullough, Zelenko, FLCCC, AAPS, etc, etc, etc, offered prevention and treatment options. The fact that many politicians, physicians, and media chose to censor and demonize us without ever bothering to do the research is appalling. I’m not ready to chalk it up to “we didn’t know”….they CHOSE not to know, for whatever reason.

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