No, The 'Elites' Did Not Get COVID Mostly Right

It's easy in retrospect to see what became one of the most insidious, harmful elements of our decision-making process during the COVID-19 pandemic: groupthink among a class of people who will not recognize their own fallibility.

Call it what you want; experts, elites, intellectuals, politicians, the class of people who put themselves above others by virtue of their own sense of self-importance. They ran riot over individual liberty, common sense, reasonable judgment and the scientific process during the pandemic. 

In short, they got almost everything wrong. 

In the aftermath of the pandemic, there's been a more widespread acknowledgment that the elites disgraced themselves. At least from outside those circles of groupthink that the intellectual class continues to run in. But within them, there's a concerted effort to act as if the past five years didn't happen the way they did. That with revisionist history and enough willful disregard for reality, we can act as if the elites and experts did their jobs well, with honesty, inquiry and truth-seeking. Instead of what actually happened.

Just ask them.

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 17: Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies during the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies hearing to examine proposed budget estimates for fiscal year 2023 for the National Institutes of Health on Capitol Hill on May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

The ‘Elites' Were Spectacularly, Provably Wrong About COVID

Tyler Cowen is, by any measure, one of the elites. He's the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University. As his bio at The Free Press explains, he has a long list of accomplishments and qualifications. A Ph.d from Harvard University. A New York Times best-selling book. Named by an Economist poll as one of the most influential economists of the last decade, and a "Top 100 Global Thinker," per Foreign Policy magazine in 2011. 

And what do you know, Cowen, as one of the elites, is out with a new article in The Free Press defending the conduct of his intellectual peers. Incorrectly.

The problems start with the almost immediate realization that subheading and the article directly contradict itself. 

"Whatever you think of elites, real intellectual elitism is based in science, open-ended inquiry, and truth-seeking behavior," the top of the article says.

Sure, but that sounds like the polar opposite of the thesis of the article: that the elites don't deserve the hate they get for their behavior during the pandemic. Anthony Fauci did not base his positions on science. That's not an opinion, we know, for a fact, that he didn't. 

How do we know? Well, just for a few examples, when he dismissed the lab leak as a conspiracy theory from the White House podium, there was no scientific justification for doing so. The "Proximal Origin" paper did not scientifically rule out a lab leak, putting aside the fact that Fauci purposefully declined to explain his own role in getting the paper published and his relationship with both the writers and his connection to funding gain-of-function research. 

Then there's his flip-flop on masks. In February 2020, he said that the science showed masks don't work. Six weeks later, he'd done a 180 and said masks were effective and should be worn by everyone. There was no new science to justify that change. Because there were no new studies conducted in that timeframe to inform his position. 

This pattern could be repeated for almost every major COVID issue. But in just the first few weeks of the pandemic, Fauci already disproved Cowen's argument. Unless he's suggesting that Fauci and the CDC's top officials were and are not "elites," which might be an even more absurd alternative history.

He wasn't done there though, far from it. One of the most ridiculous sections of Cowen's article is when he attempts to rattle off a list of things the "experts" and "elites" got right. 

"A lot of people do not want to admit it, but when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic the elites, by and large, actually got a lot right," he writes. "Most importantly, the people who got vaccinated fared much better than the people who did not. We also got a vaccine in record time, against most expectations. Operation Warp Speed was a success. Long Covid did turn out to be a real thing. Low personal mobility levels meant that "lockdowns" were not the real issue. Most of that economic activity was going away in any case. Most states should have ended the lockdowns sooner, but they mattered less than many critics suggested. Furthermore, in contrast to what many were predicting, those restrictions on our liberty proved entirely temporary."

They did not get a lot right. 

Yes, the vaccine was produced in record time. It also waned in efficacy, to quite literally zero, in a matter of months. It did not stop infection or transmission, as the elites and experts loudly and proudly claimed that it would. Cowen never mentions the vaccine passport system that led to discrimination, jobs being lost, public shaming, and corporate and university mandates. Based on the purposeful misrepresentations from the elites he so desperately defends. 

And far from learning from their mistakes, these organizations and elites are still putting out woefully inaccurate research designed to meet their ideological goals.

READ: CDC Is Still Putting Out Garbage 'Research'

"Long COVID" is also not a "real thing," at least in the way "elites" described it. They acted as if COVID was a unique phenomenon in causing severe, lasting symptoms. And while that can occur, it can occur after infection with every single known respiratory virus. There's nothing unique about it, as multiple studies have confirmed. 

How about another example of how disgraceful "elites" behaved during COVID, say, myocarditis? When the Big 10 Conference thought that myocarditis was a significant risk from COVID infection, they wanted to cancel the 2020 football season. Then when even the CDC admitted that myocarditis was actually a side effect of the COVID vaccines…dead silence. Not even a whimper from the "elites."

Lockdowns were the real issue. Yes, some people reduced mobility on their own, but private companies shut down their offices and locations because of lockdowns. Many people may have limited their behavior and exposure and economic activity for a brief time on their own, but the extended harm of lockdowns was specifically an "elite" policy. Like "15 Days to Slow the Spread" turning into "45 Days to Slow the Spread," policies that had zero chance of working. To say they "mattered less than many critics suggested" is another willful distortion of reality, as well as demonstrating an offensive disregard for the harms lockdowns caused.

Loss of learning, deaths of despair, suicide, alcohol abuse, crime, child abuse. In many areas of life, these metrics still have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Because of the lockdowns Cowen hand waves off as no big deal.

His reality denial continues by saying the "restrictions on our liberty proved entirely temporary." Mask mandates were in effect in California this month. Cowen should try visiting the hospital in Bay Area counties this winter without a mask, then thank the exalted elites that he has no restrictions on his liberty. 

How about the people whose businesses were permanently destroyed and closed during the pandemic? Were the restrictions temporary for them? How about the fact that the government demands "contact tracing" information for travelers returning home from international travel…literally today? 

How about Riley Gaines' husband being denied immigration status because he's unvaccinated…in 2025? 

READ: Riley Gaines Helps End US Government COVID Vaccine Mandate

Cowen isn't just wrong, he's purposefully and disgracefully ignorant.

"Not reopening the schools was a big mistake and meant a lot of lost learning, but plenty of elites protested at the time," he claims. "A lot of the problem was with risk-averse school districts and teachers unions, acting out of self-interest rather than scientific investigation. (Believe it or not, I even know some elites who think that teachers unions should not exist.) Other mistakes were hooking Covid patients up to ventilating tubes (corrected pretty quickly), dumping Covid patients back into nursing homes (not corrected quickly enough), and dismissing the lab leak hypothesis (corrected only slowly). In each case, ask yourself whether elite methods of scientific investigation failed us, and mostly they did not, even when the elites did."

He tries to point out a few mistakes the "elites" made, but of course, ignores others and downplays their behavior. Where were the "plenty of elites" protesting about school closures? In the real world, which Cowen apparently does not inhabit, the handful of elites who did speak out about schools were demonized, criticized, and protested. Like, say, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had teachers playing dead with signs saying "Ron DeSantis killed me," when he reopened schools in the fall of 2020. 

Or how keeping schools closed became the default elite media position in the summer of 2020 because Donald Trump wanted them open. Or how Scott Atlas was publicly criticized by his own university because he wanted schools and businesses opened. He doesn't even mention masks, because there's no way to defend how the "elites" discarded science and evidence to force mandates on the public, for years on end. Mandates that elites like Gavin Newsom, Eric Garcetti, Stacey Abrams, Hilary Clinton and Anthony Fauci himself frequently ignored whenever they felt like it. 

Of course the "elite methods of scientific investigation failed us," of course the "elites" also failed us. The whole apparatus failed us, which is why we had years of mask mandates, had vaccine passports, years of school closures, years of discrimination and learning loss. We've barely touched on how elite media handled the pandemic. Cowen's argument isn't just factually inaccurate, it's bewilderingly anti-reality. It's offensive, embarrassing, and frankly, considering his own "elite" credentials, shows how permanently broken the intellectual class actually is. What a disaster.