20/20

I don’t always agree with Bill Maher in his New Rules segment. Sometimes I feel like shouting Amen, but not after his latest offering.

He was riffing on the recent generic question posed by various candidates about being better off today or four years ago, and reminded viewers that four years ago we were just starting the long journey through Covid-19. But he quickly pivoted to griping about how America overreacted to Covid and that some of the less mainstream or popular ideas at the time actually turned out to have some merit.

It’s easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to hold such an opinion, but in the middle of it we were dealing with something no one had ever experienced before. It quickly became a matter of whose advice and opinions we trusted, and the problem became the damaging fact that there were multiple opinions, all sorts of theories and voices. A serious health threat quickly became politicized.

I tried to listen to what the CDC was saying, but then there were the competing takes—led by Trump himself—who wanted to, basically, ignore reality, who said the virus would peter out by April of 2020 and things would be back to normal. Basically, he and the rest of the libertarian, contrary right were questioning the CDC and its “oppressive” guidelines because what it was saying didn’t fit with Trump’s plans to win the 2020 election and his need to downplay what to the rest of the world was an actual pandemic, killing people left and right and taxing healthcare systems and their employees everywhere.

Sure, from his vantage point here in 2024, Maher can posit in his snarky tone that the remote learning for so long actually did hurt our children, but, again, we were all navigating new territory at the time, and being fed multiple opinions about best practices. The kids probably could have been ok, but the other facet of that was that the kids are taught by adults, who, I guess, were supposed to be ready to lay down their lives for their country, take one for the team, unconcerned with nebulous plans and guidelines for teaching during a pandemic, or their own susceptibility to infection.

It’s just too easy to be cocksure and brave and to take pot shots after the fact.