No Apology, Just Pleading the Fifth
Really? Not even once?
Back in 2022 at the old blog I wrote this about an Atlantic article by Emily Oster:
I saw one glaring lack:
An apology for getting things wrong
She’s not alone, mind you. I don’t know I’ve seen anyone apologise, certainly no one in a position of authority. That’s a problem.
I’m willing to forgive people but has to be a quid pro quo that is an acknowledgement that there is something to forgive. If you can’t admit you made mistakes and that those mistakes killed people, bankrupted businesses and so on then you don’t get my forgiveness. And as I tweeted1 people who got things wrong up to about June 2020 get a pass because there was a ton of confusion and (especially from the PRC) misleading information so figuring stuff out was hard. But anyone who continued to advocate school closures, isolation of the elderly, mask safety theater and so on after that date needs to apologise.
Anyone who insisted on vaccination of everyone, including the young, and wanted passports, mandates or other coercive measures needs to apologise.
Anyone who mindlessly mocked recommendations for HCQ, Zinc, Vitamin D, Ivermectin and so on needs to apologise […]. So does anyone who deliberately misinterpreted President Trump’s remarks about disinfectant to imply that he said people should inject bleach. In fact the mainstream media needs to do a general apology for their un-questioning slavish devotion to “the science” even when said “science” changed its mind and their related trashing of anyone who didn’t follow “the science” as it was declared to be at the time. Come to think of it the people stating “the science” i.e. Fauci, Ferguson and co, would do the world a huge favor by admitting that they made mistakes and apologising for them.
Anyway. That was nearly four years ago. And I still haven’t seen an apology from anyone that matters. Actually I’m not sure anyone in any government or governmental organization in the world has ever apologised. None of the “scientists” have said a word that could be taken as an apology.
In the midst of all the “under the advice of my attorneys I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, to refrain from answering your questions” blather, Herr Doktor Science notably failed to apologise. Not in his opening statement, and not when explicitly asked to by Senator Bernie Moreno. He just repeated his 5th amendment spiel.
I thought I’d put the Covidiocy behind me. We’ve got wars in Ukraine and Iran. We’ve got AI running everywhere. We’ve got Trump 2.0 and (not so good) Andy Burnham in the UK. And so on. The world has moved on. But I read some of the Fauci diaries. I’ve read the commentary on it by Alex Berenson and Jeff Childers and many others. And my frustration has come raging back.
I don’t require a jail term, repayment of all the moolah or even an admission of guilt.
Just man up (almost everyone concerned is of the male persuasion), put on your big boy trousers and say sorry.
It can be just that one word.
“Sorry”
No need to say why you are apologising. No need to say who to. Just say the word.
This particularly applies to Herr Doktor Science because he’s got a presidential pardon so saying sorry won’t land him in jail. Unless of course he shares other people’s skepticism about the validity of the autopen pardon he received.
I feel like channeling Oliver Cromwell and beseeching them, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible they may have made mistakes. In fact talking of Oliver, my mind thinks of Tudor/Stuart era justice and wonders whether an updated version might work well. I’m not suggesting it would be even slightly legal, let alone moral, but a subscription streaming show where Herr Doktor Science and his buddies were subject to having their heads flushed in a toilet or subjected to other school type tortures until they said sorry would make millions directly. The bookies and prediction markets taking bets on how long before each one screamed sorry (or indeed whether they would have breath to scream), would make bank. Probably you could sell ads and sponsorships for millions as well.
“This apology session brought to you by …”
Though maybe not because the CEOs and marketing execs who would have to approve such spends might be nervous about whether they would be next to be made to apologise for, say, hiring illegals or H1-Bs
But seriously. Herr Doktor, follow the example of Japan.
The execs at Tepco caused a radiation leak that killed a few, made a large chunk of Fukushima radioactive and only didn’t have something worse because (AIUI) the then Prime Minister overruled their dithering. They stood in a room, faced the cameras and apologized2.
The Covidiocy scientists and bureaucrats have never done anything similar. They should and the fact that they haven’t tells the world a lot about their character.
Sir Elton John says “Sorry seems to be the hardest word” but that’s no excuse to not say it.
Update: Back in 2022, Herr Doktor Science was rather less reticent, or at least claimed to be:
And later on that account was suspended because I suggested the people responsible for the covidiocy should have an “in minecraft” punishment. But forgot to add the “in minecraft” bit so it could have landed me in jail if I lived in the UK and the twitter censorbots showed me no mercy either
You can argue that they didn’t do anything more than a symbolic apology, which is fair, but that’s still more than we’ve seen from the Wuflu lot
The monumental vanity that creates a Fauci forbids any such human decency. That's the lesson of Hannah Arendt and "the banality of evil."
I disagree. I want him hung out to dry. I want him as a cautionary tale for future bureaucrats.
I also want a few other things I don't expect to get either.