Come on, Jeffrey Tucker and Great Barrington Declaration, just admit you were wrong

If there’s one constant characteristic of conspiracy theorists and cranks, it’s that they crave, almost above all else, validation. Actually, strike that. The crave, above all else, validation. They want to be proven right so badly that they constantly demand that “they” (the ones behind the conspiracy and/or their critics) “admit that they were wrong.” Failing that, they like to fantasize about a future time, when they have been utterly vindicated and, as a result, are able to exact “justice”—in actuality, retribution—on their enemies, the former I like to refer to as the fantasy of future vindication and the latter the fantasy of future retribution. You see examples of the latter, in particular, in the antivax fantasy of “Nuremberg 2.0,” in which “they”—doctors, public health officials, the CDC, the FDA, Anthony Fauci, you know, everyone antivaxxers hate—will be brought to trial for their “crimes” and then punishment meted out in the form of prison or execution by hanging, or even the guillotine. True, sometimes antivaxxers will magnanimously say that they will offer “forgiveness” or “amnesty,” but they will only “accept our surrender,” so to speak, if we science and vaccine advocates publicly “admit we were wrong.”

Such were the thoughts percolating through my synapses when I came across an article on the Brownstone Institute website by Jeffery Tucker entitled Come On, Peggy Noonan, Just Say You Were Wrong. The Brownstone Institute, as you might recall, is the “spiritual child of the Great Barrington Declaration” (GBD), which in October 2020 called for a “natural herd immunity” approach to the pandemic, with poorly defined “focused protection” to keep vulnerable people (such as the elderly) safe.

Widespread embrace of GBD-like strategies ultimately devastated public health. Based on the dubious idea that COVID-19 is basically harmless to young, healthy people and that “natural herd immunity” was even achievable, the Great Barrington Declaration was an ideological document that basically advocated eugenics, a “let ‘er rip” approach to the pandemic, in which the supposedly young and healthy would just catch a bad cold and the elderly and those with chronic health problems that rendered them most susceptible to severe disease and death from COVID-19 apparently consigned to indefinite lockdown in the name of “focused protection.” It was an approach that never would have worked given the practicalities and, more importantly, because “natural herd immunity” requires lifelong (or at least very long-lasting) postinfection immunity as a prerequisite to be even possible, something not true of COVID-19, as evidenced by successive waves of immune-evading variants of SARS-CoV-2. Indeed, the one Brownstone flack has even implicitly admitted—without actually outright admitting—that the GBD never would have worked.

In any event, with the promise that the GBD could achieve herd immunity within six months in tatters more than three years after it was released, Mr. Tucker’s post was a good reminder to me that, when it comes to cranks, every accusation is an admission, starting right with the first paragraph of his article:

The answer to the question “Will they ever admit to being wrong?” is of course: no. I’m speaking in particular of the architects of the lockdown and mandate policies that wrecked the rights and liberties of billions worldwide. 

Now they want to pretend like it never happened or that someone else is responsible. And they do this even as they hammer out policies and treaties that normalize that exact response – ok some tweaks here and there – in the future, while forging institutions that crush dissent. 

Those people we know about. They are rather hopeless. 

Here, Mr. Tucker, let me rephrase that for you:

The answer to the question “Will they ever admit to being wrong?” is of course: no. I’m speaking in particular of the architects of the “natural herd immunity” plus “focused protection” approach to the pandemic and policies that wrecked the health of billions worldwide. 

Now they want to pretend like it never happened or that someone else is responsible. And they do this even as they hammer out policies and treaties that normalize that exact response – ok some tweaks here and there – in the future, while forging institutions that crush dissent. 

Those people we know about. They are rather hopeless. 

Indeed they are, just like Mr. Tucker, who, recall, was arguably the architect of the GBD, having brought the three scientists who wrote it together, back when he still worked for the right wing “free market” think thank American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). Now that it is clear that “natural herd immunity” was always impossible given the mutability of the coronavirus and how short-lived even postinfection immunity is, what does Mr. Tucker do? He constantly doubles down and paints himself the victim, even though GBD-aligned scientists and advocates had access to the highest levels of government in 2020 and were very influential in promoting policies that looked very much like the GBD—or at least nothing like the draconian “lockdowns” that Mr. Tucker likes to perseverate about, even though they were never as dramatic or prolonged as he claims.

Now here’s the amusing part of his reaction to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Peggy Noonan. Note that I do not have a WSJ subscription and therefore only have access to the parts that Mr. Tucker quotes. It doesn’t actually matter that much anyway, but I always do like to read the original article deconstructed by someone else, just to make sure that someone like Mr. Tucker is not misrepresenting it. In this case, here’s what set Mr. Tucker off:

This comes to mind because of an effusive and even absurdist article by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. It was about how and why Taylor Swift is the greatest thing America has to offer. The language here is intentionally over the top and she knows it. It’s a fun way to write. I know this because I used to write this way all the time, celebrating the glories of vending machine chicken salad or the McDonald’s cheese stick or what have you. 

My argument here is not with the hyperbole as such. The problem comes deep into the article where she says the following: “Downtowns across the country—uniquely battered by the pandemic and the riots and demonstrations of 2020—are, while she is there, brought to life, with an influx of visitors and a local small business boom. Wherever she went it was like the past three years didn’t happen.”

Now you might read this and think: So Peggy Noonan likes Taylor Swift and is amazed at her power to inject lots of cash into locations where her concert tour stops, such that it seems to make people forget the pandemic had happened? If so, you wouldn’t be Jeffery Tucker, who is mightily offended by this single phrase “uniquely battered by the pandemic”:

Battered by the pandemic? Seriously? The pathetic pathogen never closed a single business, school, church, country club, arts theater, mall, stadium or public park. Governments did that, on the advice of crazed experts who pushed for this nonsense with no concern for public well-being. Media got involved cheering the lockdowns and denouncing anyone who doubted their glories. Big Tech censored dissident voices. 

Noonan could have fixed that sentence with the addition of one word: response. The pandemic response. It would be easy enough to type that word. Sure, that’s a bit lame but at least it is accurate. 

So tendentiously persnickety is Mr. Tucker that he can’t accept that to most people the term “the pandemic” is shorthand for the COVID-19 pandemic and, yes, everything associated with with the pandemic, everything that happened because of it. You know that. I know that, but Mr. Tucker has a point to make! Of course, he’s also full of crap that SARS-CoV-2 “never closed a single business.” True, businesses were closed temporarily by government orders, but a lot of business owners also decided on their own that it wasn’t safe to stay open and decided to close their businesses themselves. You’ll never see Mr. Tucker rant against such business owners, however; rather, he’ll still find a way to blame the government.

In fact, given the outbreaks in, say, meat packing plants, one could argue that government policy didn’t go far enough, with governments seemingly willing to do something that Mr. Tucker very much appears to approve of given his political leanings: Sacrificing working class individuals to keep industry working. After all, that was the essence of the GBD, sacrificing the working class so that corporations could keep making money and people like Mr. Tucker were not unduly inconvenienced, damn the cost. After all, even if it is true that SARS-CoV-2 is a lot less dangerous to younger people than it is to the elderly, that is not to say that it is not at all dangerous to younger people, and we have many deaths among them to demonstrate that.

After attacking Ms. Noonan some more for being among the “panic mongers who thought the lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates were just fine” and because she had referred to COVID-19 vaccines when they rolled out as a “human and scientific miracle” (which was accurate), Mr. Tucker writes:

Ok, Peggy, we get it. You bought all the propaganda. Many did. We corresponded at the time and it was very cordial…until you realized that I was on the anti-lockdown side. It didn’t matter after that whatever evidence I presented to you that the government was up to no good. I sent link after link and was very friendly. 

At that point, you stopped replying, despite having many mutual friends. I was not being antagonistic. I was simply hoping that you would get ahead of the curve. You didn’t want to get ahead of the curve. You wanted to thread the needle of opinion very carefully. 

Interesting. So Mr. Tucker is really annoyed that Ms. Noonan ignored his arguments or found them wanting. It sounds like more of a personal beef than anything else. Still, none of this stops Mr. Tucker from deciding to generalize his annoyance that one pundit, Ms. Noonan, didn’t find his brilliance as brilliant as he did to the entire press:

I cannot say that I fully understand this way of thinking. But this much is clear: Peggy is hardly alone. Nearly every writer in every venue talks this way. Finally, the media is talking about ill-health, learning loss, shut businesses, demoralized population, angry voters, loss of trust, inflation, you name it. Finally there is talk about all of this.

But universally, the prattle is the same. It’s always the pandemic, never the government’s response.

• “9 Ways the Pandemic May Have Led to Precocious Puberty” ~ Psychology Today
• “Kids Played Team Sports Less In 2022 Than Before Covid-19 Pandemic” ~ Forbes
• “Walking trips fall sharply in Portland post-pandemic” ~ Axios
• “Mesilla restaurant owner navigates pandemic recovery” ~ Fox

And so on it goes, as if to wipe out the history of the worst public health policy in the history of humanity. Plenty of people want to do that. Certainly most governments in the world would like that. Regardless, pundits should not help them. Even if they were wrong in the past, nothing is stopping them from admitting the truth now.

Remember, Mr. Tucker’s preferred response to the pandemic would have been to do basically nothing. Oh, sure, the GBD talked about “focused protection,” but, as I discussed above, never really defined it or explained how we would have protected the vulnerable when a highly contagious respiratory virus was spreading unchecked throughout the rest of the population. As many have pointed out, it’s not as though we could have just locked these people up in bubbles indefinitely. Basically, Mr. Tucker’s preferred policies would have been no policies at all, regardless of the death toll.

Of course, to justify such a lack of public health response, it is necessary to believe that the virus itself is not any more dangerous than a bad cold and that, in essence, nothing should be done about it other than to let ‘er rip. To Mr. Tucker and GBD ideologues, keeping the economy humming along is far more important than many millions of additional cases of COVID-19 and many thousands, perhaps millions, of additional deaths among “useless eaters” (i.e., the elderly and those with chronic diseases that make them more susceptible to severe disease, disability, and death from COVID-19). Think I’m being harsh? I don’t. Again, the GBD was a eugenicist document from the start, and neo-Confederate Mr. Tucker has been its chief propagandist, having gone so far as to form a new “institute” that he had explicitly called the GBD’s “spiritual child.”

As such, for him, every accusation is an admission, especially his conclusion:

Truly, these writers discredit themselves with their contorted attempts to pretend that the microbial kingdom and not government itself is responsible for disaster. 

The truth is nonetheless getting out there, even if you cannot read about it often in mainstream news. We have to get this history correct. Everything depends on it. 

Mr. Tucker discredited himself long ago by having facilitated the GBD, which claimed that, if we just did essentially nothing, the virus would spread through the young and healthy, who would only be briefly inconvenienced with a severe cold, and thereby magically result in “natural herd immunity” for all. The very assumptions behind the GBD, in particular the assumption that “natural herd immunity” was even possible for a virus that mutated to produce within months variants capable of evading postinfection immunity from prior variants, were always very wrong. However, you will never see Mr. Tucker admit that.

Truly, for cranks every accusation is a confession, and what they crave above all is vindication, even if they have to lie and say that they’ve been vindicated when they have not.

Finally, I realize that I could probably have put Taylor Swift’s name in the title and then SEO’ed this post up the wazoo to seem to be about Taylor Swift, thereby likely bringing in much more traffic. However, I am above such considerations. A little, even. Well, I did include a picture of Taylor Swift as the featured image. I’m not completely above base considerations of traffic and clicks.