The danger is too great that a government agency or commission empowered to sit in judgment over individuals who were in office during the two years starting in March 2020 will abuse its power. The risk is too high that the pursuit of justice will descend into a hunt for revenge. No such agency or commission will act with the requisite objectivity to make its decisions just. To suppose that any such formal inquiry into personal guilt or liability would be adequately apolitical is as fanciful as supposing that lockdown-happy officials in 2020 were adequately apolitical.
In this imperfect world of ours, officials who were responsible for pursuing even horribly destructive policies yesterday are best left immune to being formally punished or sanctioned by officials who are in power today. The dangers of empaneling tribunals to punish recently dethroned officials for their policy choices include, but go beyond, the above-mentioned risk of today’s officials pursuing revenge rather than justice.
An equally fearful danger springs from the reality that almost every significant change in policy can be portrayed by its opponents as an unwarranted assault on humanity. Because real-world complexities will always enable opponents of the challenged policy to muster some ‘evidence’ of extensive damage that the policy allegedly caused, empaneling tribunals today to punish officials whose policy choices were implemented yesterday will, going forward, discourage not only the active taking of bad policies, but also the active taking of good policies.
And the disproportionate attention that the public (and politicians) pay to the seen at the expense of the unseen makes it likely, in my view, that the discouragement of good policy moves would be much greater than the discouragement of bad policy moves.
Suppose that a precedent is set that encourages those in political power today to persecute, with charges of having pursued harmful policies, individuals who held political power yesterday. Further suppose that when COVID-28 hits, officials then in power wisely follow the advice offered in the Great Barrington Declaration. I have no doubt that choosing this policy course would minimize deaths. But no policy will completely avoid deaths. COVID-28 will indeed kill some, perhaps many, people.
When COVID-28 is finally over and a new political party takes power, there’s nothing to prevent the new party from empaneling a tribunal to hold those officials previously in power personally responsible for the deaths that occurred on their watch when COVID-28 raged – deaths that will be blamed on what will be said to be the reckless following of Great Barrington Declaration guidance....<<<Read More>>>..