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When one of Elon Musk’s DOGE hires came under fire because of old social media posts, Vice President JD Vance defended him on X, writing, “Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes.”
But what if it’s the government or the media making the mistakes? Do institutions deserve grace, too? That’s a question that arises from a New York Times op-ed published last week, and the reaction to it.
The piece, by Zeynep Tufekci, was entitled “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives,” and it’s about how scientists and public health officials worked together to advance the idea that COVID-19 emerged from animals in a Wuhan seafood market.
By virtue of the headline alone, it’s a prime example of why so many conservatives don’t trust the press.
The origins of the virus became a fiery dividing line that still smolders today, and one of the reasons that so many conservatives turned on Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health officials. As early as April 2020, Fauci was saying that the pandemic was a “direct result” of these live animal markets, saying on Fox & Friends, “I think we should shut down those things right away.” Meanwhile, people who thought it more likely that the virus had escaped from a lab were called right-wing conspiracy theorists and racists.
It took a while, but public opinion eventually came around to the “conspiracy theorist” side of the issue. By spring of last year, 7 out of 10 respondents in a Deseret News/HarrisX poll said they believed the coronavirus escaped from a lab — which is what the Central Intelligence Agency said is likely, back in 2023.
For a columnist in The New York Times to say as much now seems, well, a bit late, and conservatives have piled on Tufekci, a Princeton University professor of sociology and public affairs. But they’ve mostly piled on The New York Times, saying that the article failed to note that its writers were the ones doing the misleading.
As often happens, people conflate the position of The New York Times as an institution with an individual writer offering their own opinion. Tufekci’s thoughts are her own and don’t represent the The New York Times as an institution. Still, the piece landed awkwardly, to say the least. And even while blaming public health officials for doing the misleading, Tufekci rebuked Covid skeptics who “weren’t just earnestly making inquiries; they were acting in terrible faith, using the debate over the pandemic origins to attack legitimate, beneficial science, to inflame public opinion, to get attention.”
No wonder, then, that the piece left a bitter aftertaste for some conservatives who questioned Covid policies and were derided for doing so. Jennifer Sey, a former executive at Levi Strauss & Co. who was critical of pandemic school closures, wrote in a lengthy post on X last week, “I’ll never look at people the same way again. I will forever be distrustful. I won’t forgive or forget, certainly not without a heartfelt apology.”
Others on social media echoed that “never forgive, never forget” mantra with regard to Covid policies — effectively denying “grace to people who make mistakes,” which the vice president rightly reminded us we shouldn’t do.
Mistakes were made, no question about that — from scientists advancing a chosen narrative over truth, to a Times reporter tweeting that the lab-leak theory was racist, to panicked shoppers throwing punches over toilet paper. And yes, the media was too quick to buy in on every word from Dr. Fauci’s mouth. The pandemic’s lessons will have a long tail, especially for health officials and journalists.
America is being De-Faucied
It seems like yesterday when even Republicans were buying Fauci socks, Fauci cupcakes and Fauci prayer candles. He was, after all, the most prominent public health official who stood by Trump’s side literally and figuratively in the early days of the pandemic — until that famous face palm made conservatives suspect that he wasn’t actually on the president’s side.
By September of 2020, Stat News reported that trust in Fauci was falling; by October of the next year, a majority of Americans thought he should resign. As criticism continued to mount about the pandemic response, he retired at the end of 2022 after a half-century at the National Institutes of Health.
And this year, a mural of him was stripped off a wall at the NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, the Washington Post reported. Also removed was a Fauci quote that admittedly wouldn’t play well with the current administration: “Science is telling us that we can do phenomenal things if we put our minds and our resources to it.”
It was only a few years ago that conservatives were decrying the progressive push to strip the country of monuments, street and building names, and even literature and movies that were deemed not fitting for the cultural moment. America’s “tear them all down” moment, I wrote at the time, was “the latest installment of iconoclasm, the destruction of physical objects that reflect a passing era or value set.”
We’re seeing this now, Republican-style, in the de-Fauci-ing of the NIH, and the demolition of the Black Lives Matter mural in Washington D.C., which has pained even some conservatives, despite the many controversial aspects of the movement.
It is to be replaced with a mural of celebrating America’s 250th birthday next year, Axios reported.
The Reverse Boycott is Here
Conservatives who boycotted Target in 2023 and 2024 because of its marketing of LGBTQ merchandise have an excuse to shop at the retailer again.
Progressives are now boycotting Target because the company has reversed its DEI policies, in response to the Trump administration’s orders regarding diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The new boycott has been called a “Target fast” because it corresponds with the six weeks of Lent.
Recommended Reading
Samuel J. Abrams has fond memories of Scouting and the 40 merit badges he earned: “As a nation with a new presidential administration and rhetoric of an America returning to greatness, the fact is that if we are going to make this country truly great, we must figure out a way to make the lessons that I had from these merit badges commonplace, whether through schools, Scouting or something else entirely.”
After years of decline, the number of drunk driving crashes is ticking up, Naomi Schaefer Riley writes. So is the incidence of cannabis-related accidents: “As far back as 2019, before cannabis use became as widespread as it is today, a survey by AAA found that an estimated 14.8 million drivers said that they have operated a vehicle within an hour of using marijuana.”
The latest troubling trend in impaired driving
Brad Wilcox and Maria Baer team up to examine the latest troubling reports about how America’s young men are doing, and why progressives are starting to express concern, too: “Particularly in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the progressive line has been that men are modernity’s winners. … But the data paint a different picture; and it’s getting much harder to ignore.”
Progressives are starting to come around on the importance of marriage and fatherhood
My Latest
You can watch the fiery debate between Megyn Kelly and Glenn Greenwald over the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Columbia University protestor Mahmoud Kahlil — or keep your blood pressure level by reading the facts of the case that I assembled here.
What we know — and don’t know — about the Mahmoud Kahlil case
Elegy for an Eaglet
The celebrity bald eagles you read about here last week have lost one of their newly hatched babies — it’s unclear whether it was a casualty of cold, suffocation, birth defect or any other risk of the wild. My apologies for any pain I may have caused by bringing them to your attention. Wildlife cams are not for the faint-hearted. Send your condolences, story ideas and favorite Dr. Fauci quotes to me at Jgraham@deseretnews.com. Thank you for reading and for being part of the Right to the Point community.