A year ago, Professor Tom Nichols of the Naval War College predicted that one of the most lasting consequences of COVID-19 would be a widespread “return to faith in serious experts.”
Well, so much for that.
Making these kinds of guesses is a mug’s game. Still, it’s difficult to think of a single opinion from last year that has aged as badly as Nichols’: From the hysteria-mongers predicting a second Black Death, with tens or even hundreds of millions of fatalities, to those who insisted that it would be impossible to rapidly develop a vaccine, very little about what experts told us has inspired confidence.
First, we heard that masks were not only pointless but actually bad, that no one should wear them. Then, we were told what might be politely described as the opposite, that not wearing them even outdoors was tantamount to murder. Instead of going out in the sunshine, people were encouraged to stay indoors, where the virus was most likely to be transmitted.
The latter remained the consensus until virtually the George Floyd killing, when suddenly large-scale gatherings became not only permissible but imperative. (Only a week earlier I had been lectured for allowing my children to play on a merry-go-round because I had not — no joke — brought along a bottle of disinfectant.)
When someone finally writes the history of this bizarre era, I hope the book’s cover photo is an image of a looter wearing a face mask, presumably because he doesn’t wish to spread the virus to those whose property he is stealing.
Now, in New York state, the same experts who introduced active COVID infections into nursing homes, resulting in thousands of deaths, have made it official policy that small children wear masks at daycares and summer camps. (After an outcry, they changed it from a mandate to a recommendation, which is still absurd.) The bureaucratic geniuses are kind enough to make exceptions for when the kids are sleeping or swimming.
The virus that poses no meaningful risk to kids’ health anyway understands that it’s nap time, just like it knows to stay away when you’re eating at your restaurant table — but not when you’re walking through the restaurant. Likewise, the virus knew that it was only allowed to come out at night, which is why New York bars were initially allowed to reopen on condition that they close before the nocturnal predator emerged.
Living in the rural Midwest, where common sense doesn’t allow us to stoop to such absurdities, I find it hard to imagine that children anywhere actually wear masks. My own kids have never done so, nor will they ever. They wouldn’t even if we told them to. Our gleefully naughty 3-year-old routinely removes his shoes and even his pants and shirt in public settings, including churches. The idea that he would keep a mask on for more than five seconds, much less wear it in accordance with guidelines that might make it effective (not touching or removing it, not using it as a sand pail or a slingshot), is risible.
Not only were the experts wrong about everything from masks to outdoor transmission to the risk posed to children and younger adults; they were also painfully na?ve about the consequences of lockdowns. Last year’s increases in violent crime, sexual exploitation of children, addiction, drug overdoses and other so-called “deaths of despair” and unemployment were entirely predictable. Now the same people who couldn’t spot these evils on the horizon are absolving themselves of all responsibility.
This is why a year I can say with confidence that COVID-19 didn’t make me or anyone else more likely to trust experts. The virus has probably done more to discredit the cult of expertise than any event since the American invasion of Iraq of 2003, when virtually every major organ of opinion in this country accepted on the basis of no evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Add NAFTA’s devastation of American industry and the supposed impossibility of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, and it’s clear that the so-called adults in the room are the most childish of all of us.
Matthew Walther is editor of The Lamp magazine.
Twitter: @MatthewWalther