Democrats still wont admit the toll of their COVID hysteria

When I first came across Jonathan Chait’s new Atlantic piece, “Why the COVID Reckoning Is So One-Sided,” I assumed the answer would be that Democrats had been the ones relentlessly and tragically wrong about virtually everything during the pandemic.No such luck.In Chait’s telling, the left remains uncannily open-minded, always striving for truth, while the dogmatic right remains hopelessly bogged down in “pathological incuriosity.”Even when conservatives are right, they’re right in the wrong way.These days, people on the left, Chait contends, “have engaged in searching self-reflection — on school closings, the lab leak hypothesis, the political aftereffects, and other unanticipated lessons.Conservatives have used the occasion to engage in a round of self-congratulations and taunting of the libs.”Now, you and I may believe dunking on libs who accused you of committing mass murder for going to church is perfectly normal behavior.

Chait, though, is irked by all the “gloating” and “football-spiking.”Especially because a handful of left-wing outlets have published columns (five years late) begrudgingly admitting that lockdowns were a failure.Sure, in a “bout of confusion in the face of fast-moving events,” mistakes were made, he says, but Democrats merely engaged in a good-faith debate.Which is why, I guess, Chait wrote a COVID-era piece headlined “American Death Cult,” accusing Republicans of deliberately murdering their own citizens. Nothing says “self-reflection” like accusing your political opponents of being psychopathic nihilists.It should also be mentioned that very few “reckoning” pieces genuinely wrestle with the left’s policy mistakes during COVID.The idea that a widespread reconsideration of pandemic-era policy is underway is a myth.Not one Senate Democrat voted for former Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya to be director of the National Institutes of Health, despite his history of being correct on COVID policy...