Pandemic reaction should still trouble us six years later
“See you in two weeks,” a colleague said to me.
Six years later, those words still haunt me.
It was a gray Friday morning in March 2020. The weather matched my mood and my trepidation. In the wake of Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) Covid-19 lockdown order that effectively shut down all businesses, except those that were “life sustaining,” I was gathering supplies, client files, and other items I would need to continue rebuilding my law practice remotely after a stint in public service. My colleague’s statement was sunny, optimistic and… naive.
It was in direct contradiction to my mood.
“No, you won’t,” I replied matter-of-factly. “It will be longer. A lot longer.”
My colleague told me that I was being crazy and my right-wing extremism was showing.
Turns out, I was right.
Having served in government for eight years, I knew the inclinations of the well-meaning folks who were in charge of our liberty and safety. I feared that the newly instituted lockdown and subsequent fallout would last months, if not years. I knew government officials’ terror at possibly making a mistake surrounding safety. I knew the general condescension these officials had toward their constituents’ ability to protect their own health, safety, and welfare. By virtue of being in government, public officials often confuse legal authority with knowledge, wisdom, and discernment. They believe their positions imbue them with knowledge and insight the rest of the public lacks.
If there’s one thing government is good at, it’s infringing on liberty, especially in times of emergency. And one thing modern politicians are bad at is admitting mistakes. If data didn’t support the emergency measures, government would still double down on them. Emergencies are seductive to politicians. They allow them to do things our state and federal constitutions otherwise prohibit. Emergencies amplify politicians’ platforms. They make them look like they are “doing something.” They also empower politicians to freely demonize anyone who opposes a nonsensical policy as insensitive, uncaring, and reckless.
This is exactly what happened. We suffered through nonsensical policy after nonsensical policy. It was predictable.
Our leaders made us suffer through:
- Social distancing, keeping people six feet from each other,
- categorizing Pennsylvania counties as “red,” “yellow” and “green,”
- keeping nursing homes closed to visitors, isolating our elderly,
- closing playgrounds and gyms,
- shopping in “one way” store aisles,
- masking, and
- vaccine mandates.
We then routinely saw politicians who supported these rules violating them. Then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) got her hair done by a closed salon with her staff. California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom hosted an elite dinner at an expensive French restaurant. Philadelphia Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney left the state and socialized at a restaurant, something he would not permit in his own city. State Representative Wendy Ullman (D-PA-Bucks) was caught on camera without a mask, and then said how she would put one on, just to be seen taking it off in the name of “political theater.” Left-wing protests were important, but gathering for Thanksgiving would kill you.
My personal favorite remains Wolf’s county color scheme. If anything demonstrated how venal and arbitrary today’s politics are, it was Wolf keeping Lebanon County in the “yellow” status, when the rest of the state was in the “green” phase. Lebanon routinely ignored state mandates, and the Wolf administration exacted retribution. With the prescience of a biblical prophet, Wolf knew that Lebanon would be able to move to the “green” phase a week later. The data didn’t matter.
The “green” phase didn’t mean much. Masks were still mandated in public. After canceling in-person instruction for the end of the 2019-20 school year, many districts decided not to offer it for 2020-21. Schools resuming in-person instruction were fraught with battles between crazed parents wanting strict social distancing, masks, and ruthless sanitation and parents who saw through the performative, virtue-signaling nonsense. In Bucks County, Democratic Commissioners Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie actively undermined the advice of their health director that masks weren’t necessary to open schools. When two mothers asked for their communications under the state Right-to-Know Law, the commissioners unsuccessfully sued them. Predictably, they doubled down, rather than admit they were wrong.
In the early days of the pandemic, my wife and I watched an interview with Anthony Fauci, supposedly the nation’s most preeminent infectious disease expert. We heard him contradict himself over and over: The disease was deadly, but half the people with Covid would not show symptoms; masks weren’t necessary, but they could help. I asked out loud why we couldn’t isolate our vulnerable, work on a cure, and let the rest of society go about its business. I couldn’t understand why we broke the social contract for a virus most people didn’t know they had, especially when acute cases were the very slim exception, rather than the rule.
Things only got worse. Censorship became the norm. YouTube removed videos from reputable doctors explaining herd immunity because the videos were “dangerous.” Social media shadow banned and outright censored commentators with contrary views. When the vaccines came out, anyone who questioned the speed with which they were developed, their underlying technology, and their potential side effects was pilloried. As we heard stories of vaccinated people getting Covid, the Biden administration doubled down and threatened the jobs of anyone who wouldn’t take the vaccine.
In 2024, Fauci testified before Congress and admitted that neither social distancing nor cloth mask requirements were backed by clinical trials or reputable science. He made it up as he went along. Government needed to look like it was doing something.
It turns out government did do something. It broke trust in our public health institutions, ruined the childhoods of a generation, and proved government will act irrationally to protect its own power when that power is questioned.
I was right. I wish I wasn’t.
Don Petrille is an attorney and served as Bucks County’s register of wills from 2012 until 2020.
