Nuanced. - 202. Did We Pass or Fail the COVID Stress Test?

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Aaron Pete breaks down how COVID exposed the West’s immaturity—through lab leak denial, unexamined social distancing, flip-flopping mask mandates, prolonged lockdowns, and divisive vaccine policies—revealing a culture that chose fear over nuance and control over trust.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

You know, In early 2020, while sitting in a constitutional law lecture at Allard Hall, I saw that first headline, Mysterious novel virus in Wuhan, China. Like everybody else, I assumed this will pass. But what happened instead was a global moral stress test. And here we are, five years later, still arguing over the foundations of trust, fear, and control. I know many of us want to forget about this period, but those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This was the issue of the decade, and we need to learn from it. So today, we're not just going to be talking about a virus. We're talking about the cultural fracturing COVID-19 exposed in the West, and how five

flashpoints revealed our tendency to opt for fear over nuance, panic over debate, slogans over science, binaries over balance. We will examine the lab leak theory, social distancing, the mask you turn, lockdowns, the vaccine mandates. These aren't just policies, they're mirrors, showing how Western societies lulled by decades of comfort recoiled from complexity, shut down discourse, and let cultural immaturity shape public life. Let's begin.

In January 2020, a few scientists in the United States and Europe began whispering about a possibility no one wanted to entertain publicly that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 might have originated not from a wet market, but from a laboratory, specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The theory wasn't new. It had been discussed in biodefense circles since SARS. What was new was how quickly the theory was politicized, stigmatized, and suppressed. In the early weeks of the pandemic, the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes

of Health, and leaders like Dr. Anthony Fauci moved swiftly to downplay the possibility of a lab origin. In a now famous March 2020 paper published in Nature Medicine, five prominent virologists, including Christian Anderson, wrote that their analysis showed the virus was not a laboratory construct or purposefully manipulated virus. The paper became the gospel of natural origin. But what wasn't revealed until 2003 congressional testimony was that Anderson himself initially believed the virus didn't. look engineered. In private slack messages and emails obtained by the U.S. House Select Committee, he wrote some of the features look engineered. We have to look into this. The paper became central to the natural origin consensus, but what wasn't known at the time was that Anderson initially believed the virus looked engineered, writing privately to Fauci that parts of it looked

inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. So why the reversal? In hearings and investigative reporting by the Intercept and Vanity Fair, it became clear that the senior figures, including Anthony Fauci, were closely involved in steering the narrative. Scientists feared their funding would be pulled or their reputations destroyed if they supported the lab leak theory. Tony doesn't want to go there, one NIH email said, referring to Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, the then head of the NIH, held a call with authors of the Nature Medicine paper shortly before it was submitted. Though they did not author it, the call gave the clear impression, if this gets out of hand,

funding and careers are on the line. Meanwhile, tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube began deplatforming or suppressing content discussing the lab leak theory. Journalists who raised it were labeled conspiracy theorists. Meanwhile, media outlets dismissed the lab leak idea entirely. The New York Times called it a fringe. NPR implied that even entertaining the theory was rooted in xenophobia. Public health authorities in Canada and the U.S. followed suit. But behind the scenes, the U.S. intelligence community kept digging, and by

23, the Department of Energy and the FBI had each issued independent assessments, concluding that a lab-based origin was plausible or likely through, though it held low to moderate confidence. By mid-2020, the CIA concluded that a lab leak was more likely than natural origin, though the case was still not definitive. Let's be clear. This isn't about being right or wrong. The lab league theory might still turn out to be incorrect. The point is, we were never allowed to have the conversation.

Institutions didn't say, we'll wait for evidence. They said, don't ask the question. That's not science. That's scientism. And it's not maturity. It's cowardice, masquerading as caution. And here's the damage. By labeling all discussion as disinformation, we undermined institutional trust. Surveys from Pew and Edelman show trust in scientists, health officials, and journalists has dropped dramatically since 2020, especially among younger, politically independent, or skeptical populations. When truth becomes inconvenient, when debate threatens status, when power silences questions, that's not resilience.

That's rot. The lab leak debate was never just about a virus. It was about how much complexity the modern West can tolerate in the face of uncertainty. And the answer was not much. Instead of saying, we don't know, we said shut up. Instead of inviting questions, our leaders issued decrees. That's what immature societies do. They mistake criticism for attack.

They mistake transparency for betrayal. And then they wonder why no one believes them anymore. Social distancing. Within weeks of the first cases of COVID-19 appearing outside China, countries around the world rolled out a public health strategy few had ever imagined. Social distancing. Overnight, schools closed, businesses shuddered, grandparents were cut off from their families, parks were wrapped in caution tape. Tape X's appeared on grocery store floors.

Two meters became gospel. It was framed as a moral imperative. Flatten the curve. Protect the vulnerable. But behind the marketing of the phrase, something critical was missing. Discussion. Where was the cost-benefit analysis? Where were the trade-off conversations?

Where was the transparency on the research? Social distancing is not a new concept in epidemiology, but its widespread deployment in response to a respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2 was largely untested at scale. Prior pandemic planning documents, including Canada's 2018 pandemic influenza preparedness guidelines, warned that prolonged school closure, travel restrictions, and widespread quarantine should only be used with caution.

Why? Because of the massive downstream effects on mental health, education, the economy, and basic civil liberties. But in March 2020, caution was abandoned. Politicians, public health officers, and media outlets declared consensus, leaning heavily on modeling from places like Imperial College London, which projected 500,000 UK deaths without sweeping interventions. Those projections and the fear they induced became the pretext for the largest mass behavioral experiment in modern history.

Yet from the very beginning, there were voices of dissent. Epidemiologists like Dr. John Lundas at Stanford, warning that we lacked data on infection fatality rates and were over-correcting. Economists flagged potential collapse of small businesses, psychologists forecasting a coming wave of anxiety, loneliness, and suicidality, especially among the young people and the elderly. But none of those critiques made the news, unless they were framed as selfish, reckless, or ideological. Dissent was equated with indifference to human life. In October 2020, a coalition of respected scientists from Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford

released the Great Barrington Declaration, arguing for an alternative strategy focused protection. Shield the vulnerable, including those in long-term care, while allowing younger, healthier populations to return to normal life. This, they argued, would build herd immunity while minimizing social and economic harm. The reaction? Public shaming. Dr. Anthony Fauci called the declaration total nonsense. Dr. Francis Collins, the then-head of the NIH, wrote in a now public email that it needed a devastating takedown.

And the media complied, dismissing it as a fringe libertarian stunt. Facebook downranked its links to it. YouTube demonetized content discussing it. even when their recommendations were echoed later by public health experts, including targeted vaccinations, proportional restrictions, and harm reduction, the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration remained blacklisted in many circles. And here's the key. They weren't necessarily right. Their model had flaws. But they weren't allowed to be wrong in the open. They were treated like heretics. And that's the problem. because in the years since, we've had time to look at what happened, and the results are sobering. A meta-analysis by Johns Hopkins found that lockdowns, a more extreme form of social distancing, reduced COVID mortality by just 0.2% on average. The Lancet and JAMA published similar findings. The impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions varied widely, and most reductions.

and transmissions likely came from voluntary behavioral change, not mandates. Meanwhile, the costs of social distancing are undeniable. The United States National Assessment of Educational Progress scores in Math and Reading fell by the largest margins in 30 years. Mental health surveys showed spikes in anxiety and depression, particularly among youth. Elderly residents in care homes died not only from COVID, but from isolation and neglect. And yet, there has been no reckoning, no public inquiry into how these decisions were made, no apology for the damage, no promise to debate trade-offs more seriously next time. Instead, we doubled down, valorizing restriction and vilifying anyone who hesitated to enforce it.

This wasn't science. It was the performance of certainty in the absence of humility. In law school, we're trained to weigh the competing values, liberty versus security, rights versus responsibilities. In public health, the same principles apply. But during COVID, we forgot that tradeoffs are not cruelty. They are reality. We acted like any consideration of cost was equivalent to selfishness.

And the kind of thinking, absolutist, panicked, moralizing is the opposite of maturity. In my 2021 interview with Rick Hansen, he said, resilience isn't built by hiding from the storm. It's built by facing it, learning from it, and adapting. That's true for individuals, and it should be true for governments. But instead of trusting people with the complexity, we simplified the message. Stay home. Save lives. Don't ask questions. What a tragic missed opportunity for public education, civic engagement, and collective growth. Because nuance isn't a luxury. It's a necessity, especially in a crisis. The mask, you turn. In March 2020, if you wore a mask in a grocery store,

you were more likely to get a strange look than a thank you. Not only, were masks not recommended, they were actively discouraged. Dr. Anthony Fauci on 60 minutes said bluntly, there's no reason to be walking around with a mask. Dr. Teresa Tam, Canada's public health officer, echoed that guidance, saying masks might give a false sense of security. And in British Columbia, Dr. Bonnie Henry described masks as unnecessary for the general public, saying there was no clear evidence they helped outside clinical settings. The reasons given were on the surface understandable. There was a global shortage of PPE, and governments feared public hoarding. But instead of saying, we need to preserve these for frontline workers, the message to the public

was they don't work. In other words, officials lied to shape behavior. That decision to manipulate rather than level, would have ripple effects far beyond the spring of 2020. By April, the messaging shifted dramatically. New evidence had emerged. Asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals were spreading the virus. Suddenly, masks were a key tool in controlling the pandemic. The CDC reversed its position. So did the Public Health Agency of Canada.

In July 2020, mask mandates were introduced in jurisdictions across North Carolina. America. To many, it felt like science evolving. To others, it felt like gaslighting. And here's the problem. The reversal itself wasn't the issue. Science changes. Data accumulates. That's normal. What broke trust was the refusal to admit this change was strategic, not scientific. Fauci later admitted that masks were discouraged to preserve supply. In his words, I don't regret it. but I was concerned that people would go out and buy masks and leave health care workers without them. But that admission came months later. In the interim, the public was expected to obey guidance that contradicted prior advice

with no accountability or transparency. People weren't asked to trust the science. They were told to trust the spokesperson of the science, even when these spokespersons had misled them. The result? Mass confusion. And worse? Mass division. People who continued to question mask efficacy were labeled irresponsible or dangerous. If you wore a mask before April, you were paranoid. If you didn't wear one after May, you were selfish. Overnight, a piece of fabric became a symbol of moral allegiance. Meanwhile, the science itself remained and still remains nuanced.

A 2021 Cochrane review found that high-quality masks like N95s can reduce viral spread, especially in clinical settings and when fitted properly. Cloth masks? The evidence is mixed at best. Real-world efficacy depends on multiple factors. Ventilation, mask quality, consistency of use, and social behavior. But none of that nuance made it into the public briefings or school. school board decisions. Instead, the messaging became absolute. Masks work. End of story.

Except it wasn't the end. Dr. Bonnie Henry, despite the national trend, resisted making masks mandatory in BC schools and public spaces until much later than other provinces. In her words, masks are a blunt tool. They can be divisive. They should be the last resort, not the first. She wasn't denying their usefulness. She was acknowledging their limits, both scientifically and socially. But for that, she was attacked by some for being too soft and by others for being too inconsistent. In other words, she was punished for nuance. And that's the heart of the problem.

Public health messaging, especially in a crisis, has to be clear. But it also has to be honest. Instead of what we got was a mixed fear-driven directives and moralistic scolding. Questions weren't answered. They were treated as threats. Even respected medical professionals who questioned mandates were reprimanded, censored, or fired. A doctor in Ontario was removed from hospital duty for calling for better mask-fit testing. In the U.S., some physicians were threatened.

with disciplinary action for saying cloth masks weren't effective. This wasn't about science anymore. It was about control. And ironically, the very attempt to assert the control undermined the goal. By the end of 2022, public trust in health authorities had plummeted. Pew Research found that only 29% of Americans had a great deal of confidence in public health officials, down from 43% in 2020. In Canada, confidence in the federal COVID-19 response declined by 14 percentage points between March 2020 and November 2021. I spoke with former health minister, Patty Heidu, in 2024.

She acknowledged the confusion stating that tough decisions had to be made quickly. If institutions want to maintain public trust, they must model what we of demand of citizens. honesty, humility, and responsibility. The mask U-turn wasn't a sign that science failed. It was a sign that our culture doesn't tolerate uncertainty. And our governments don't trust us to handle the truth. That's not public health. That's paternalism.

And that, more than anything, explains why we're still cleaning up this mess. Lockdowns. Latin the curve. That was the slogan, the chant, the ethical compass of March 2020. Lockdowns were pitched as the only responsible response to a looming tsunami of hospitalizations and death. For a time, they felt like a moral necessity. Protect the elderly, preserve ICU capacity, break chains of transmission. Politicians and public health officials repeated the phrase like gospel. This is temporary, we were told. A few weeks to buy time. That was the social contract, but it was never renegotiated.

Weeks turned into months, months into seasons, and what began as an emergency response hardened into the long-term governance by executive order. Restrictions extended far beyond flattening the curve. In Canada, religious services were banned. Parks and playgrounds were taped off. People were fined for walking outside without a mask. In Quebec, a literal curfew was introduced, the kind that used during wartime. Initially, these restrictions had broad public support.

But here's the thing about consent. It doesn't last forever if you don't revisit it. The ethical foundation for lockdowns became shakier the longer we went on. Why? Because governments stopped treating them like emergency measures and started defending them as indisputable public goods. Let's steal man the case first. Early on, there was little data about COVID's lethality or transmissibility.

The virus overwhelmed Northern Italy and New York hospitals. Leaders had to act fast. Many epidemiologists, like Dr. Michael Mina, believed that early aggressive suppression could avoid long-term catastrophe. Others feared a second 1918. So the logic was, overreact now rather than underreact and regret it later. But Steel Manning is not the same as surrendering.

Even in March 2020, many experts warned that broad, indefinite lockdowns would carry profound costs, especially for the most vulnerable. Dr. J. Badacharya, a Stanford physician and economist, argued that school closures would devastate poor families, cause irreparable learning loss, and examine. exacerbate inequality. He was right. By 2022, U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress scores showed that the largest decline in math and reading scores in 30 years. Canada saw similar losses, especially in working class districts. The World Bank found that an additional 70 million people globally fell into extreme poverty during the pandemic, not because of the

but because of the economic shutdowns. Even the World Health Organization's 2019 pandemic planning guidelines warned that lockdowns should be used sparingly and only with transparent, time-limited goals. Those goals never came. What we got instead was a feedback loop of justifications without benchmarks. And then there was the mental health crisis. The Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto

reported that anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among young people spiked to record levels during lockdowns. Calls to suicide hotlines increased across the board. Domestic violence shelters were overwhelmed. People struggling with addiction lost access to harm reduction services and counseling. As of 2023, British Columbia was record recording its deadliest years ever for drug overdoses. surpassing even pre-pandemic highs. These weren't just bugs in the system.

They were features of a policy that prioritized one kind of risk, viral spread, above all others. Still, those who raised concerns were treated as threats to the public good. Critics of lockdowns, even when citing peer-reviewed studies or mental health data, were often accused of being anti-science, selfish, or right-wing. It didn't matter if you were a lifelong progressive or a trauma-informed psychologist. If you opposed to the dominant narrative, you were marginalized.

And the media didn't help. They rarely covered the harms. They reported COVID case counts like sports scores, but failed to contextualize them against deaths from untreated cancer or delayed surgeries. In Canada, we saw record-breaking wait times in ERs, but very little critical reporting on how restrictions impacted non-COVID health outcomes. In my 2024 interview with health minister at the time, Patty Heidu, she acknowledged how unprepared our institutions were.

She described how she never expected to wield that type of power and that she didn't have the systems in place to manage that kind of stress across multiple departments. It was an honest moment, but it raises a chilling question. Why did we normalize unchecked executive authority for over two years with so little debate? To her credit, BC's Dr. Bonnie Henry showed a more cautious hand. She resisted blanket mask mandates in schools, warning they could become divisive. She hesitated on curfews and travel bans unless they were tied to clear evidence-based justifications. But she, too, eventually capitulated to pressure.

caught between public expectations and political inertia. The great tragedy is not that we locked down. It's that we never reopened the conversation. We didn't revisit the data. We didn't apologize for the harms. We didn't re-earn the public's trust. We acted as if criticism itself was more dangerous than the virus. And that, more than anything, proves how immature our system became under pressure.

Lockdowns were supposed to be a temporary emergency measure. They became a long-term social operating system. One built not on public dialogue, but on moral panic, political optics, and an unaccountable power. We need to ask, how do we build a system that can respond to a crisis without defaulting to authoritarianism? The next emergency is coming, whether climate, cyber, or something else. If our only playbook is panic, we'll repeat the same mistakes. And next time, we may not be in the same grace period to learn. The vaccine mandate?

The vaccine rollout in late 2020 was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel. After months of isolation, fear, and lockdowns, vaccines represented a way out. A miracle of modern science delivered in record time. And in many ways, they were exactly that. For high-risk individuals, for the elderly, and for immunocompromised people, the MRNA vaccines offered genuine life-saving protection. But what began as hope quickly transformed into something else, a tool for social sorting, political posturing, and moral punishment. Let's start with what was indisputable. The first wave of clinical data from Pfizer,

Moderna, and AstraZeneca showed that the vaccines were highly effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalization. Health authorities around the world rushed to distribute them. The public queued up in record numbers. Doctors volunteered on weekends. There was a moment of shared optimism, but it didn't last. As soon as supply caught up with demand, a new conversation began, not about access, but about compliance. Within months, governments introduced

vaccine mandates for health care workers, federal employees, travelers, even children in some jurisdictions. Proof of vaccination became a requirement for boarding a plane, entering a restaurant, attending university, or visiting family in long-term care. These weren't fringe policies. In Canada, by fall 2021, most provinces had introduced vaccine passport systems. In British Columbia, the vaccine card became a requirement for gyms, theaters, and events. Those who refused, often citing medical concerns,

personal risk assessments, or principled objections, were sidelined, fired, silenced. And let's be clear, not all of these people were anti-vaxxers. Many had received other vaccines. Some were even pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate, but nuance had already left the building. The public narrative hardened. Vaccination equals good, unvaccinated equals bad. The binary logic dominated political rhetoric, media framing, and even public health messaging.

Among those most revealing moments came from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself. In January 2021, Trudeau clearly stated the vaccine mandates would divide Canadians. In an interview with Reuters, he said, we know the vaccination is a personal choice, and we're not going to create a situation where people are forced or coerced. That would be divisive, and that's not the Canadian way. It was a rare moment of foresight. He understood the risks. He had named them, and then he ignored them. Less than a year later, Trudeau's government implemented one of the most aggrateful. aggressive vaccine mandates, regimes in the Western world, requiring federal workers,

cross-border truckers, and air travelers to get vaccinated or face job loss and travel bans. Canadians who chose not to comply were excluded from public life, treated as if they were dangerous, unclean, or uncivilized. It wasn't just policy. It was political escalation. During the 2021 election, Trudeau went further. stroking division in explicit terms speaking in French on a Quebec talk show he said of unvaccinated Canadians they are extremists they don't believe in science they are often

misogynists and racists do we tolerate these people he didn't just reverse his position he vilified Canadians he had already warned would be alienating by this approach that wasn't public health. That was wedge politics. This shift from cautious unity to calculated division wasn't backed by new science. It was backed by Poland. Vaccine mandates became a cultural fault line used to rally urban and suburban voters while framing the hesitant as a threat to national virtue. In a crisis, you see the true character of leadership. Trudeau didn't just abandon his principles, he exploited fear after predicting it. And we haven't even talked about the money. In 2021 alone, Pfizer reported over 80 billion in revenue, setting a pharmaceutical industry record.

Moderna followed close behind. These were government-backed contracts with liability waivers and media partnerships. Yet any public questioning of profit incentives was quickly labeled as anti-science or conspiratorial. Meanwhile, legitimate concerns about the vaccines themselves, rare but real side effects like myocarditis in young people, men and menstrual irregularities in women, were initially dismissed or ignored. It took months for Health Canada and the CDC to formally acknowledge these outcomes. But even after acknowledgement, the public debate remained off limits.

Doctors who spoke cautiously about booster frequency, dosage timing, or natural immunity were de-platformed. Others were professionally censored. The message wasn't disagree respectfully. It was comply or disappear. And the science, it didn't always support the policies. By 2022, evidence from Israel and the UK showed that vaccinated people could still transmit COVID-19, particularly. particularly after six months, calling into question the foundational premise of the vaccine passports. But no apology came. No policy was reversed. No media mea coppa. Let's be clear, vaccine saved lives.

They were a scientific triumph. But the coercive architecture built around them, the mandate, the exclusion, the moral absolutism, undermined trust in science, and damaged the social. social fabric. In my 2024 interview with Patty Heidu, I asked her about her role in all of this. And there were a lot of lessons learned and tough decisions were made. But emergency is not immunity from accountability. The vaccine rollout wasn't just a medical operation. It was a test of our societal values. And we failed.

We punished legitimate questions. We politicized health decisions. We traded complexity for moral certitude, and we divided a country on purpose. A mature society would say, we did some things right, we did others wrong, let's learn. An immature society says, we did everything right, shut up, and guess which one we're still living in. Conclusion. Today we've walked through five flashpoints of the COVID. 19 pandemic. Five moments where our institutions, media, and culture were tested under pressure.

And five times we chose the immature path. We chose censorship over conversation. We chose panic over proportionality. We chose obedience over trust. We chose moral certainty over scientific humility. We chose scapegoating over understanding. And we paid for it with jobs, with fractured friendships, with delayed surgeries, with collapsed trust, with children who now read two grades below where they should be. We saw a plausible lab leak theory instantly labeled a conspiracy, not because it lacked evidence, but because it was inconvenient. We later learned that scientists themselves had doubts about natural origin, but feared backlash.

What could have been a transparent debate became a closed-door whisper network. That's not scientific maturity. That's institutional self-protection. We saw social distancing policies rolled out with no cost-benefit transparency. Children were locked out of schools. The elderly died alone, and mental health collapsed across age groups. Economists warned. Pediatricians warned.

Psychologists warned. We didn't listen. Or worse, we called them selfish for caring about, collateral damage. We saw mask policies reverse, not because the data changed overnight, but because officials lied to shape behavior. Fauci, Tam, and Henry, all initially discouraged masks to preserve supply. Then they reversed course and pretended nothing happened.

What could have been a moment to say, we made a hard choice under pressure, became yet another instance of message control over honest leadership. We saw lockdowns drift from emergency measures to operating system with no sunset clause, no second look, no transparent benchmarks. When people asked whether the cure was worse than the disease, they were treated as political enemies, not as citizens seeking accountability. And finally, we saw mask mandates mutate from public health policy into a political weapon. Justin Trudeau warned that vaccine mandates would divide Canadians, and then, used them to do exactly that. He called unvaccinated citizens, misogynists and racists, not because science demanded it, but because his political calculus did. We turned a breakthrough in

science into a bludgeon for cultural conformity. And in all five cases, we did it with the best of intentions. That's the hardest part to say out loud. Most people weren't trying to deceive or dominate, they were trying to do the right thing. But good intentions don't excuse bad behavior. And panic doesn't justify permanent policy. So where do we go from here? We have to stop treating dissent as dangerous. We have to stop treating disagreement as disinformation.

We have to stop treating precaution as permanent. We have to stop treating policy as morality. The only way out of this cultural immaturity, is through institutional humility and public courage. Humility means admitting we got things wrong. The early errors were forgivable, but sustained suppression was not. It means building systems that aren't just reactive, but reflective. Courage means letting citizens into the conversation, not just experts, not just politicians,

but real people with real lives and real stakes. We must relearn what participatory democracy looks like under pressure. Let's lay out some principles for the next time, not because we're planning for COVID too, but because the next crisis is coming, whether it's climate, cyber war, AI, or inflation. We will be tested again. So here's the checklist for a mature society in a crisis. Transparency. Don't say trust to the science.

says, here's what we know, what we don't, and what we're still figuring out. Two, proportionality. Every restriction must come with a cost analysis and a sunset clause. Three is pluralism. Let ideas compete in the public square. Censorship is not caution. It's cowardice. Accountability.

Every leader who wielded power in the pandemic should be asked, What did you learn and what would you do differently? Redemption. Forgive people for what they believed in April 2020. What matters now is what we choose to do and what we learn from it. Because the real pandemic wasn't just viral. It was psychological. It was epistemological.

It was cultural. It revealed that many of our institutions don't trust the people. And many people in return no longer trust the institutions. trust can't be rebuilt without public relations it has to be rebuilt with accountability rick hanson once talked about resilience is earned it's not given he wasn't just talking about spinal cord injuries he was talking about life civic life political life the life of a free and thinking people david suzuki told me that real science starts with doubt not certainty we forgot that but we can remember it again. The goal isn't to be perfect the next time. It's to be better, smarter, more honest, more open, less reactive, more resilient. A mature society isn't the one that makes no mistakes.

It's the one that can admit them publicly, soberly, and bravely. If we want to grow up as a culture, it starts there. Not with rage, not with revenge, with refrave. with reflection.