no room for reflection?

I didn't bother to read the article in the Atlantic about COVID "amnesty" or any of the many reactions to it.  I can understand why someone who was barred from being with a loved one at their time of death, or someone who lost a job, or someone whose spouse is suffering from depression or alcoholism, or any of the many terrible outcomes that resulted from misguided Covid policies would refuse to simply brush off the harm that was done (and that continues to be done) in the name of public health.  Dr Scott Atlas recently said that Dr Fauci is guilty of presiding over "the biggest failure in public health history."  I would say there is plenty of blame to go around and Dr Fauci is not the only one at fault.  

Yet at the same time, I think the Atlantic piece is important.  The article may be self serving, an attempt to exculpate wrongs rather than answer for them, but it's at least a first step, a start to raising the uncomfortable question of whether all that was done -- the lockdowns, the forced vaccinations, etc. -- was justified.

What troubles me is that there has been no effort, at least that I have seen, within our community to consider the same issue.  Was closing shuls for so long really justified?  Was firing teachers who were unvaccinated?  If you like, you can ask whether the community was too slow to react to the dangers of the virus or whether there was more that could have been done?  Either way, the issue deserves reflection.

I do not think it is fair to say that the question is strictly an issue for the medical community or a public health issue and not a religious/halachic issue.  In other words, I do not think it fair to say that the Rabbis and leaders in the community were simply following the dictates of public health and medicine and therefore are excused from any onus of responsibility.  Medical professionals are biased, like all people.  Political and financial motives affect their decision making; their judgment and reasoning can be as faulty as anyone else's.  (Recommended reading: False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine by Theodore Dalrymple.)  Just today, Dr. Jha, the head of the White House Coronovirus response team, said, "We can prevent every covid death in America" if everyone gets their booster.  This is an obvious lie.  Many, many people who have been vaccinated and gotten boosters continue to die with Covid.  Were someone to take this doctor's word at face value and declare that getting a booster is a matter of pikuach nefesh, as it assures one of avoiding death from Covid, that person would be a fool. A declaration by a medical professional does not excuse one from thinking critically, examining the evidence, and considering other points of view.  One need not be a doctor to form an informed opinion on a public health issue issue any more than one need have a PhD from the Harvard School of Government to have an informed opinion on foreign policy.  So no, the onus is not on the public health community alone.  The onus is also on the Rabbinic and lay leadership of the religious community to reflect on whether their decisions/psak were arrived at through an informed, unbiased assessment of the differing opinions and information that was available, or whether they perhaps uncritically followed and were too easily led by modern shaman down wrong paths, perhaps paved with good intentions. 

For someone, either a layperson or a leader, to think that their community -- whichever community it is and however they handled the response to Covid -- got it 100% right and there is no need for further reflection and consideration, to me is just another mistake among many of the Covid era.