An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “Francis Collins Has Regrets, but Too Few”, page A12: The broader theme of the piece is the botched response to the Covid pandemic. The piece cites the recent, and in the Journal’s view, inadequate apology from Francis Collins for his and Fauci’s efforts to discredit the Great Barrington Resolution at the outset of the crisis. You will remember that the GBR recommended highly focused attention on the elderly and vulnerable while allowing younger people at lower risk to get on with their lives. Instead, we got lockdowns. The country continues to struggle with the consequences of the policies proposed by Fauci, Collins, and the public health community, consequences measured in terms of emotional/phycological harm, learning deficits on the part of American school kids, financial/economic damage, etc. We have the finest public health infrastructure in the world. We had advance warning. Despite all this, we still botched it.
Along the way—it’s been 4 years now—we have watched our government fail repeatedly in other spheres of activity: the disastrous retreat from Kabul, the halting efforts to aid Ukraine in its fight against tyranny, the pathetic efforts to stem the flow of migrants at the southern border…I could go on. Is it any wonder that citizens have so little regard for our institutions, public and private? They don’t work anymore. The people who manage them are incompetent. Or corrupt. Is Harvard really any better than the CPS?
Like Lenin in 1901, I ask, “What is to be done?” I turn to you, the ones Lenin called "the vanguard". You all are the educated ones, the dynamic ones, the ones who will define the response to our national dysfunction. So, what do you propose we do? Set forth 3 to 5 immediate action steps a new (and he/she will be new) president should take.
I don’t have any brilliant ideas. I am Howard Beale, hanging out of the window, screaming, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”